Beside Myself (episode #1535)

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.

A few weeks ago, we had that call from Dean.

He’s a teacher in L.A., and he wanted to know what our thoughts were about handling teen profanity in the classroom.

Right, or on campus anywhere.

Yes, and we heard from a lot of listeners about that.

And I wanted to share this email from Judy Heights, who lives here in San Diego.

She wrote,

I taught high school for years. The rules across campus for language were, to say the least, variable.

I quickly realized that high schoolers can be lawyers when it comes to negotiating rules.

And I think any parent of a teen will agree with me.

Or a middle schooler.

Right.

Or a preschooler.

Or a elementary schooler.

So she decided to talk with them about how words themselves aren’t inherently bad, but in a context, they have meaning and people associate different feelings with them.

And then she said, I said if they wanted to curse in my class, they had two choices.

I gave them a list of curses from Shakespeare, or I told them they could shout,

Moo cow!

And as you can imagine, Moo cow was the hit.

Kids would get mad, start to curse, and yell, Moo cow!

Then instead of being mad, they would start to laugh.

You cannot stay mad while yelling, Moo cow!

She said, I knew I was succeeding when I had kids come into class snickering, saying someone had yelled moo cow in another class.

And all the kids laughed and the teacher was confused.

She said the best part was nobody got into trouble.

That’s right.

Avoided the whole question and didn’t have to play rules lawyer with the kids.

Exactly.

Can you imagine every single day, 35 kids, every single one a lawyer, wanted to challenge you on every single rule?

Yeah.

High school litigation.

No, thank you.

No, thanks. No, thanks.

Moo cow.

Moo cow.

Well, we know you’ve solved this problem in your own way, either at home or school, maybe the workplace.

How do you deal with profanity, small and large?

It’s kind of safe and not safe at all.

We are still taking your calls and your emails about that.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello. You have A Way with Words.

Good morning. Is this Martha?

This is Martha. Who’s this?

This is Carol Rader, and I’m in Falmouth, Massachusetts.

Well, Carol, welcome.

I’ve got Grant here right with me.

Welcome to the week, Carol.

Welcome.

When I was in the sixth grade, which was the last year of elementary school, the town I was in, we all had autograph books.

Now, this was in the early 50s.

Now, my dad would write in everyone’s autograph book, as you travel through life, whatever your goal, keep your eye on the donut.

And not on the whole.

All I can remember his saying to me at the time was it was just something he heard or he remembered from his childhood.

And he was born in 1912.

So he had lived in a little time in New Jersey and then some other time in Brooklyn.

That makes a lot of sense to me.

There was a coffee shop chain called the Mayflower Coffee Shop.

And their slogan, believe it or not, was exactly that.

Oh!

Yeah.

And they ran from the 1930s to the 1970s.

They were based in New Jersey and New York.

You can find some really wonderful information about them.

It looks like the classic coffee shop, the kind of place that you now only see in old movies.

And it was based on older kind of catchphrase that you would find in things like high school yearbooks

Or the doggerel column of ladies’ magazines or just kind of the filler tidbits that would show up in newspapers

When they had extra column inches to fill.

And the slightly older version that was found by word historian Barry Poppick, it goes like this.

It’s from 1904.

Twixt optimist and pessimist, the difference is a droll.

The optimist, the donut sees.

The pessimist, the whole.

Aha.

So it’s the same sentiment.

The later version, which is very much like your father’s,

As you ramble through life, brother, whatever be your goal,

Keep your eyes upon the donut and not upon the whole.

Yes.

Now, did this would show up then mainly in newspapers and magazines?

Originally, yeah, but then this coffee shop adopted it as their motto,

And it would appear on their menus and in their advertisements and other places like that, yeah.

It’s good advice, right?

Well, I put it on graduation cards to this day.

Do you?

Oh, yeah, sure. Perfect for that.

Yeah, let’s hear it one more time, Carol.

As you travel through life, whatever your goal, keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.

Words to live by.

And I also appreciate your bringing up the idea of autograph books.

I had one in sixth grade as well.

It was red and it was kind of soft.

That was a big deal, right, passing those around and getting people to?

It was, and I don’t know where mine got lost.

I haven’t seen it for years.

But, yes, I mean, we would have them pass it around, the teachers, other students,

And again, you know, parents of friends would write in them.

Yeah, that was pre-Instagram.

Well, I love those when I find them.

You can often find them scanned at various digital archives because they’re filled with teen slang and college slang.

They’re wonderful to go to, and I can find real live examples of the language used by kids at the time.

So besides the heartfelt message, it’s actually good for language research.

Maybe you’re just scanned on there.

You never know.

Carol, thank you for your call. We really appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

All right. Take care of yourself, Carol. Call us again sometime, all right?

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

I loved those memories, the memories of the—we didn’t have signature books. We had yearbooks.

Right.

But they were still this repository of the wisdom of kids in some ways, usually put together by a class of kids with the guidance of a teacher.

But still a kid’s product of a kid’s mind and the year and the era and the things that kids cared about.

Yeah.

Important to us. Yeah. Did you feel

Pressure to come up with original

Things? Oh, I did. You know what I did?

I would always put mysterious predictions

For the future. Like, beware

The man in the green shirt, things like

That.

You would have scared me.

And I just hope that a few

Of them came true and somebody right now is like,

How did he know?

There was a man in a green shirt.

You did me wrong.

877—

929-9673.

Grant, you and I have a lot in common, but one thing that’s different is that my name is not a verb.

Oh, that’s true. Although sometimes when I, never mind.

She really Martha’d that?

I saw people asking my name.

I do sometimes say Grant, as in Grant Three Wishes.

Oh, that’s nice.

Yeah, they’ll remember it more likely.

They won’t call me Graham for the rest of the evening.

Grant-a.

Grant-a.

Yeah.

So there are a lot of names that have a verb that it could be.

That could function as a verb.

So what are some other ones on the list?

Well, there’s Bob.

Right, Bob for apples.

Yep.

Mark.

Mark, your place in a book.

Right.

Chip.

Chip in for dinner.

Yep.

Sue.

Sue for the Peace.

There are lots of these.

Yeah, there’s a ton of those.

Mostly first names, but maybe some last names.

Well, yeah, that would be a whole other genre, wouldn’t it?

So I guess we could put the call out.

We could put the call out.

What are some first names or last names that also double as verbs?

Right.

Don’t josh us now.

Let us know.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hi there. You have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Gabriel Ray.

Hey, Gabriel. Where are you calling us from?

Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Ooh, nice.

Welcome to the show. What’s up?

I’m at work, but I told my boss, so I stepped outside to figure out the history of my grandfather’s phrases.

Wonderful.

Let’s hear it. What are they?

Well, the one that I was thinking about was Everything’s Duck But the Bill.

Everything’s Duck But the Bill?

Yes.

Wow. Tell us more. When did he say that?

What was he doing when he was saying that?

He said it all the time.

And then my dad started saying it, and my grandfather passed away.

So a lot of the times it happens in a bad situation.

Like last time I remember my dad doing it, Bill had showed up for a family dinner that was a little higher than expected. And he was like, everything’s duck but the bill. And then my sister didn’t make it in a ballet tryout, and my dad was like, well, everything’s duck but the bill. And we just kind of laughed because it’s like, what does that even mean, dad? Why do you always say that? And he’s like, you know, son, to be honest, I just don’t know. But my dad said it all the time. And so he just started saying it.

So whether it’s good or bad, you know, surprised or, you know, whatever he’s doing, he’ll just take a breath. I’m like, well, everything’s duck but the bill. There are a bunch of those in English, phrases that we say, just nonsense, non sequiturs that we just throw in to provide glue in a conversation and move back and forth between the awkward situations.

Are they all as awkward as this one? Often, yes. Often. Well, I’m wondering if he just made it up. I mean, there’s an old proverb that goes, nothing ruins a duck like its bill. It’s a warning to keep your mouth shut. You know, you and your big mouth, you know, wise duck takes care of its bill.

Oh, so you’re saying in an awkward situation where somebody doesn’t make the ballet and the meal isn’t what you wanted, it might just be good just to be silent and polite. Yeah, maybe. Or, I mean, you talked about him getting the bill for a meal at a restaurant. We got the wordplay there, too. Yeah. Yeah. Was he a punster? Sometimes, yeah, he is. He’s a sharp guy, but he really just says it because none of us know what it means. And for the longest time, I thought it was like a secret that he wouldn’t tell us until I turned 18 or something. But that wasn’t true. He never knew what it meant either.

Well, you know what? We can crowdsource this. If somebody else uses this expression, we will hear about it and we’ll let you know. Okay? Okay. Very cool. Let us know if you find out more, too. All right? Okay, I will. Thank you. Okay. Bye. Thanks a lot. You, too. Bye. Bye-bye.

877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org. Fred Allen was one of the icons of the golden age of radio, and he once said, hanging is too good for a man who makes puns. He should be drawn and quoted. You’re laughing in spite of yourself. That’s so very Fred Allen, though. Portland! Portland! He also said, I like long walks, especially when they’re taken by people who annoy me. I’ll have to go listen to some more of him. He was fantastic, and he never got the credit he deserved. He didn’t get the fame quite as much as Jack Benny, but in a lot of ways he was a better comedian and a better writer than many people who were far richer and far more famous than he was.

Oh, that’s interesting that you mentioned that because what had attracted me to him originally was another quotation, which is, a human being is nothing but a story with skin around it. Oh, I love that. Isn’t that the truth? Isn’t that the truth? Yeah. And his story deserves to be on film. It really does. I read three biographies of Jack Benny and they’re all kind of like meh. And I really like Jack Benny, but I think Fred Allen would be where the action be at. I’m not kidding. I’ll have to go read more about him.

877-929-9673. More of what we say and why we say it as A Way with Words continues. 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 here he is, our quiz guy, John Chaneski. Hi, John. Here he is. Hi, Grant. Hi, Martha. How are you guys? What’s up, bud?

Well, I have for you this week sort of a classic puzzle. Now, a classic puzzle type is to take a word and remove one letter from somewhere in that word to leave another word. Right? Now, that’s what we’re going to do today. Classic. But you know what else is classic? Greek. So, the one letter you’ll be removing from these words is the name of a Greek letter. For example, if I said, I piled my gear on the horse that was in front, you would remove the letter pi from piled to get the word led. Now, as you can see, the sentence itself sort of clues the result word. Okay? Okay. All right?

We’ll start with an easy one. The alphabet is fun to learn, I’ll wager. Alpha. Alpha and bet. We’re removing alpha from alphabet, and we get the word bet, which is also a wager. Yes, very good. Perfect. That’s how we like to hear it. Here’s another one. The police detained him after he ate his fancy meal. The police detained him after he ate his fancy meal. Police. I think it’s detained. That’s what I zeroed in on, but. That’s the word you’re looking for, yeah. Oh, it is? Okay. Eta. Yeah. Take Eta, E-T-A, from detained and it leaves dined, which is what he did with his fancy meal. Yes, very good. Perfect.

Now, when my kids emulate me, it makes me super happy. When my kids emulate me, it makes me super happy. Right. So that would be mu, emu. Right. And you take that out and you get elate. Which is happy. Right. From emulate. Yes. Very good. Here’s another one. The Pinot Noir was rejected. Oh, pie from Pinot gives us not. Yes. Not. Yes, it was rejected. It was not. How about this one? This one Sharpie is for the three of us to use. Sharpie. Share. Pie from Sharpie leaves share. Yes, very good.

The tipsier patrons were in the upper level. The tipsier, meaning drunker? Yes. The tipsier patrons were in the upper level. Yeah, so if you take out sigh from tipsier, then you get tear. The upper tear. Yes, very good, Martha. Nice job. Now, as for me, I’m going to hail a taxi and take out the zai and just say ta. Goodbye, guys. TTFN. We’ll talk to you next week. This is a fun show about language. We’d love to have you be a part of it. 877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org or talk to us on Twitter @wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is Gina Stevens. I’m calling from Athens, Texas. So my husband and I, we always listen to your program as we head over to Fort Worth on Saturday, and we always think of possible questions. And it was funny, when we got back home, we weren’t even trying to think of the question, but we were watching the weather, and I asked him, I said, it’s interesting because he’s from New Hampshire, and they say New Hampshireites. I am from North Carolina, and I consider myself a North Carolinian. And then I said, I wonder if there is a grammar rule in place that helps one to know whether or not you use an IAN at the end or an ITE to know the proper moniker for ascribing the area that an individual hails from, like a Bostonian or a Canaanite. Is there a rule to help us know?

Yeah, there’s not a single rule, is there, Grant? No, no, there’s about five rules with a zillion exceptions. And I usually tell folks, if you are so deep into place names and demonyms, as they’re called, that demonym is the term for a person who belongs to a place. If you’re so deep into that, then you probably might as well just memorize the terms and forget the rules. But because there’s so many exceptions, just like the rest of English. But in general, things like if it ends in an E or an EA, you get like an E-A-N at the end. So Belize, the country of Belize, becomes Belizean. But of course, there’s an exception like France, which gets you French, right? Yeah, or Paris. In Paris, they’re not parasites. No, they’re not parasites. No, that doesn’t end in an E or an EA, right? So you also get it ends in an A, then it becomes an N. So America becomes American. If it ends in other vowels, it also tends to become an N. So Morocco becomes Moroccan. Otherwise, you also tend to do an I-N, not always. So Iran becomes Iranian. But again, a zillion exceptions.

And sometimes they take place names where they just decide to do whatever the heck they want.

So they have a local nickname, which becomes the point of pride and doesn’t have anything to do with the place name.

Or because it sounds weird, they don’t go with the actual one that follows the rule.

They go with something else.

Yeah, there was a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, George Rippey Stewart, who came up with a list of about seven of those.

And H.L. Mencken helped popularize them.

If you Google his name or municipal onomastics, you’ll find that’s the term for this kind of thing, municipal onomastics.

You’ll find lots more.

He had a couple of books.

One is called Names on the Land, which I highly recommend.

Another one is American Given Names, talks about people’s names, but American Place Names.

So Names on the Land and American Place Names are two books by George R. Stewart, which I recommend.

You can find most libraries will have a copy here or there, and you can find them at archive.org as well.

Excellent.

And you said it was called municipal what?

Municipal onomastics, O-N-O-M-A, onomastics, S-T-I-C, onomastics?

Got it.

From the Greek word for name.

Yeah, so onomastics is the naming of things.

Basically, there is no fixed set rule.

There are some in place, but there are always exceptions to it.

And individuals that hail from an area, they can also come up with their own.

That’s right.

Way of naming their place. Yeah, the exceptions are vast. That’s a very good summary. Would you

Like to come work for us? I would love to. In education, you know, you have to repeat.

Just make sure you’ve got it right. Right. Education and couples therapy.

Exactly. If I’m understanding you correctly. That’s right.

Yes. Well, you guys have been so helpful and we certainly enjoy your show.

Thank you very much. Take care, Gina. Best to your husband. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

The giant statues of Easter Island in the Pacific are called Moai.

That’s M-O-A-I.

And they’re the subject of a Nova National Geographic documentary that shows how those giant stone carvings could have been moved into place.

And the idea is that they were moved by people pulling on ropes on either side of the Moai, rocking it back and forth.

And the indigenous people of Easter Island have a term for this technique.

They call it neke neke, which means walking with no legs.

And the reason that I know all of this is because of an email that we received from Alice Peach.

She is a librarian in Yuma, Arizona at Crane Middle School there.

And she was in the process of changing the library around, which included moving around some furniture and some heavy boxes.

And she was telling her family about it over dinner.

And she was describing moving this large, heavy, awkward box.

And her teenager asked if she moved it like a moai.

And without really thinking, Alice replied, oh, it was a combination of sliding and neke-neke.

And she wrote to us to say, I don’t know which was more astonishing,

My daughter asking if I move the box like a moai or my response.

And she says, in any case, I’m going to use the word neke neke in conversation more often.

And I tell you, the following week, I was having to move a refrigerator into place.

And I said, let’s neke neke that.

That’s how language changes.

That’s how language moves.

Right?

We pick up things like magpies.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Jimmy.

I’m calling from Prescott, Arizona.

Prescott, Arizona.

Welcome to the show.

Jimmy, what can we do for you?

So we were in our biology class,

And we were actually talking about coral.

And coral have a mutualistic relationship with these algae called zooxanthellae,

And they’re spelled right, Z-O-O-X-A-N-T-H-E-L-L-A-A-E.

And the question came up,

Is it not pronounced zooxanthellae? And we compare this to, like, for instance, zooplankton.

Most people would say zooplankton, but according to this spelling, it would be zooplankton.

Mm-Yeah, so why would the Z-O-O beginning of those words be pronounced zoo-o?

So like another example would be we would typically say zoology, right?

But our teacher says that it should be pronounced zoology.

And we again compare this like this just broke out into a big old conversation between our whole class.

Right. Yay.

And we compared it to the word zoom.

Right. You don’t say zoem.

Right.

You say zoom.

Right. So what’s going on here? Well, the super traditional scientific pronunciation would be a long O sound like zooplankton or zoology.

And the reason is that they go back to a Greek stem that means animal that gives us that ZOO.

And the Greek letters there are zeta, which is a Z sound, and then omega, which is a long O.

It’s like the big O, the mega O, omega, followed by a short O.

That’s omicron.

There are two different kinds of O’s in ancient Greek, omega and omicron.

And omicron is the little one and the short one.

And so for that reason, in the 19th century, learned scientists who had more of a familiarity with classical languages would have pronounced those as zoology and zooplankton and that kind of thing.

But what has happened in recent years, of course, is you mentioned zoo.

And in London, they formed the Zoological Society of London that eventually had a zoological garden.

But you see those two letters together in English, and you do think zoo.

And so today, people will use those words interchangeably, like zoological or zoological.

And you know what’s really weird, too, is that just as there’s diversity in the natural world, there’s diversity in language.

And if you look up a word like, for example, zooplankton in the Oxford English Dictionary, it has six different pronunciations of it.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, you stress the word differently depending on what you were taught,

And you have the long O as well as the short O.

So my question would then become, when you go to the zoo, is it zoa?

Does that change at all?

No, it’s a zoo, but that’s just because the more that people have seen the word zoological,

They’ve started to pronounce it that way.

So once zoological was shortened to Z-O-O, it’s always been ZOO.

Nobody ever said ZOA, just plain old ZOA.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that was just an abbreviation of a longer word.

So, Jimmy, you said you were in class.

What grade are we talking?

I’m currently a senior, and the class is animal diversity.

Okay.

Great.

Sounds like a cool class, senior in high school.

Yeah, it’s a lot of fun.

Thanks for taking time out of your class today.

We appreciate it.

Hey, no problem.

All right, take care.

Thank you for analyzing our words.

We enjoyed it.

Call us again sometime.

Thanks, Jimmy.

Yep.

Bye.

Bye.

All that history in a single word, right?

I know.

So to summarize, there’s no summary.

Well, yeah.

I mean, you can do the strict traditional pronunciation.

Well, part of it is the foreignness of how the words were made.

They’re not originally English in their parts, right?

That’s part of the weirdness of it.

Part of it is scientific terminology, once borrowed into everyday English, tends to undergo some transformation, right?

Part of it is a lot of us learn those words reading them and not by hearing them spoken by experts.

So there’s all these different paths where they could be transformed.

877-929-9673.

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Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Peter from Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

Hi, Peter.

Welcome.

What’s up?

Well, I’ve got a phrase that’s been bugging me for more than years, actually decades.

It’s being beside myself.

When people say that, it just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.

And I’ve even looked it up, and the definition or the expression itself, it means to have a different emotion.

And apparently back in the day it used to be a good thing, but nowadays it pretty much seems to me that you’re really angry or something.

When you are beside yourself, what are you like?

If I was to use that, you mean if I use the expression?

Yeah.

If I was to use the expression, I would use it in the context of being really upset, angry, mortified, just not a good feeling.

Yeah.

Does it feel like the usual you?

Is this ordinary behavior for you?

No, it’s not.

Okay.

So that’s getting at the crux of what the beside is doing in there.

Because the beside is what’s throwing you, right?

Yeah, it really is.

It seems like I’m having a different body or something.

Right.

Having an out-of-body experience.

Yeah, yeah.

There it is.

Exactly.

That’s the merging of it.

So what’s happening here is we’re talking about a beside that had another meaning.

You probably guessed that.

Deep inside, you knew that beside didn’t mean the same beside that we know today.

In this expression, it means outside or away from.

So it’s you kind of having an out-of-body experience like Martha said.

So you’re actually acting in a way that is very extraordinary for you, unusual for you.

It’s the idea of being away from your true self.

You’re not being you.

You are on the road to leaving your senses or losing your mind.

So I’m watching myself become something else.

Yeah, kind of.

It’s even similar to some of the older ideas of ecstasy, which is also about being displaced mentally.

Oh, that’s interesting.

So it’s just an old obsolete meaning of beside.

It dates to the 1400s.

It doesn’t matter very much.

And what’s interesting about it, it came into English from a translation of the Aeneid from the 1400s through French, which is probably why that expression exists as it does.

A lot of people read this translation by William Caxton.

He translated it from the French where the expression is hors de soi, O-H-O-R-S-D-E-S-O-I, literally outside of oneself.

And we borrowed this into English, and probably because it’s one single translation, it became a thing in English.

That’s fascinating. I had no idea that it was that old.

It’s kind of dated now, wouldn’t you say, Martha?

It’s kind of, I would say, archaic, but it’s got a flavor to it, maybe a literary flavor to it, or a writerly flavor to it.

Yeah, I suppose so. I think of somebody older saying, I was beside myself.

Now that you mention it, I’ve seen it more in writing where I was reading some older novels from the 19th and 18th centuries.

Yeah, that sounds about right.

Yeah, and I don’t necessarily think of it as negative so much as just astonished, you know?

Okay.

But it just basically means that you’re having a different emotion than what you would typically have.

Yeah, an extreme one, one so extreme that you’re out of your own self.

Yeah, I want to elaborate on that.

You can be beside yourself with happiness or joy or surprise.

Okay, well, that’s fascinating.

So we figured that out for you?

Yeah.

Well, thank you very much.

I really appreciate it.

Our pleasure, Peter.

Thanks for calling.

Thanks, Peter.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

You do find that when you’re reading those classic texts, maybe decide to give Dickens a chance one more time or Jane Austen is on the bedside table, and there’s those old expressions that are vaguely familiar, but the modern brain doesn’t quite click on it.

Not quite.

Not quite.

But it’s close enough to reality that you think, oh, yeah.

But, you know, the 15th time you glide over that expression, you go look it up because you’re like, oh, right, I can’t just keep guessing on this.

I need to find out for sure.

Right, right.

And this is the place where you find out for sure.

It is indeed the place where you can find out answers to all your linguistic questions, or at least most of them.

Call us, 877-929-9673, or send it to us in email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

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.

Kurt Vonnegut was no fan of semicolons.

All they do, he said, is show you’ve been to college.

Donald Barthamay didn’t like them either.

He said semicolons were ugly, ugly as a tick on a dog’s belly.

I happen to like semicolons.

How do you feel about them?

Do you like ticks on a dog’s belly?

No, I like, I think well-placed semicolons or a series of well-placed semicolons can be like skipping a stone across the surface of a body of water.

Until the sentence sinks at the end like the stone in the lake, right?

Well, there’s that.

But you like semicolons. They have their place for you.

I’m a fan. But no matter how you feel about them, you’ll never look at them the same way after you read this book that I really want you to read.

It’s called Semicolon, The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark.

And it’s by Cecilia Watson, who is not a linguist, but that’s actually really helpful for this book.

She’s a historian and a philosopher of science, as well as a teacher of writing at Bard College.

And she writes about how the first semicolon appeared in 1494.

And at that time, and for the next couple of centuries, the rules of punctuation were sort of do-it-yourself.

It was a matter of each writer’s individual taste and judgment.

And back then, punctuation marks were more like rests on a sheet of music.

They just sort of helped the reader sound out what the writer intended.

And then in the 18th century, she writes that self-appointed grammarians tried to apply the rules of Greek and Latin to English with only limited success.

And then in the 19th century, grammarians were devising systems for punctuation that would help them market their books to a public that was increasingly impressed by the study of natural science.

She writes, grammar rules began as an attempt to scientize language because science is what parents wanted their children taught in public schools.

Those grammarians often disagreed vehemently with each other.

But meanwhile, their books began to look more like science texts, including diagrams.

That’s where we get diagramming sentences.

And Watson’s book is smart and it’s witty.

It’s often poetic.

It’s packed with liveliest asides.

It’s like the kind of, you know, when you have a professor in college and you just hang around to hear what their footnotes are or their little asides during lectures.

She talks about how more recently the presence of a single semicolon in a legal document can make a crucial difference in the interpretation of a law, sometimes with comic consequences and sometimes with tragic ones.

But what really strikes me, Grant, is Watson’s own journey in writing this book, because she set out to write a biography of a punctuation mark and describes herself as a reformed grammar fetishist, the sort of person who used to feel that her love for English was best expressed by means of irritation at the sight of a misplaced apostrophe or outright heart palpitations over a comma splice.

But by the time she finished writing this book, she said she changed everything about the way she views grammar.

She writes, I still love language, but I love it in a richer way.

And that as hyperbolic as it may sound, she says that reconsidering our relationship with grammar can make us better people by, quote, focusing us on the deepest, most primary value and purpose of language, true communication and openness to others.

That wasn’t the conclusion that I expected from this book.

She is one of our people.

She’s one of our people.

Because that journey that she took is so common to people who spend any real time truly looking at what language actually is.

I’ve never met someone who stays a grumpy grammarian.

Oh, that’s an interesting point.

I’ve never, once they really get into it, actually look at the truth of language.

Right. Where’s the fun in that?

They always move along that path.

They always become someone who seeks delight.

Yes, exactly.

And she clearly has done a wonderful job there.

You sound impressed.

I am impressed, and I love that she comes to it from the perspective of a historian of science.

Oh, I love that too.

Sometimes outsiders, when they come into language, they just make a mess of things.

It sounds like she’s done a right job of it.

Yeah, that book is Semicolon, The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark, and it’s by Cecilia Watson.

We will link to that on the website.

If you’ve got a book to recommend to us and to everyone who’s listening, let us know, 877-929-9673.

Or email words@waywordradio.org or tell us on Twitter @wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Marian, and I am calling from Norfolk, Virginia.

Hello, welcome to the show.

I went to see the Downton Abbey movie the first weekend.

It came out, of course, and the movie’s set in 1927, right?

But one of the things that struck me, there was a quick moment in the movie where, and you know the plot here, the king and queen are coming to visit Downton Abbey and there’s all this activity.

So there’s this moment where Lady Cora is talking about the preparations and she says, and then there’s all the swag or something like that.

And it made it sound like swag as stuff, preparations, not the swish of fabric that you might have on draperies.

And I got to wondering about the word swag and was it a thing in 1927?

Huh.

And you’re sure that she didn’t mean like the festooning or the bunting or special drapes or any kind of luxurious curtains or tablecloths or that sort of thing going down?

That didn’t seem like the context of her comment, but maybe it was.

Maybe she was talking about all the flags and decorations that they have to put up.

What else would she have meant by swag?

She’s not talking about gift bags with iPods in them, is she?

I don’t think so.

Well, the word swag in terms of just stuff or plundered booty was in use for a good century before 1927.

I’m wondering if it was the festooning because swag has been used to mean that kind of thing that Grant was describing.

Yeah, since the late 1700s at least.

And certainly if you’re gussing up a place because the king and queen are coming, there is a lot of decorating and ornamenting happening.

Right.

So the swag would have meant all the decorating they had to do in preparation.

Yeah, it could have been.

The Downton Abbey folks have been generally pretty good about avoiding anachronisms.

They made a few goofs in the series.

If you remember them, there was a scene where somebody talked about blowing a gasket.

Yeah.

And the expression push comes to shove, I remember that they got caught out on both of those because those weren’t around in that sense.

But none of them crucial to the plot.

Right.

Nothing was crucial to the plot.

And push comes to shove was around in this country, in the U.S., but not in that country for a while.

But swag as a way of saying, you know, festooning or decorating was a thing back in the 19th century?

Absolutely, yeah.

Well back to the late 1700s for sure.

And there are other uses of it.

Like as Martha said, the plunder or booty uses of it also is that old, several centuries old.

And also the idea of a swag bag, which is a thing you carry your personal belongings around, existed, but it was Australian and New Zealand that existed at the time, too.

I don’t see how either of those applies.

The booty or kind of plunder term doesn’t really apply.

Do we know the origin of the word swag?

No, we don’t.

It might come from some Scandinavian word, but the truth is that the swag in terms of booty or plunder, at least, we’re not totally sure.

Maybe it has to do with some kind of bag.

But not an acronym.

Right.

Definitely not an acronym.

Not an acronym.

Yeah.

Mary, what did you make of the movie?

Well, people asked me how I liked it.

And I said, well, if you liked, it was like watching a whole season of Downton Abbey in like two and a half hours.

Yeah.

And I said, if you liked the series, you’re going to like the movie because there’s no backstory.

They just throw you right in the middle of it.

And if you don’t know what’s going on before you walk in the movie theater, you’re going to be completely lost.

Well, Marion, I want to thank you for the question, and I want to thank you for the earworm.

Now I’ve got the Downton Abbey theme in my head.

Oh, you’re very welcome.

It’s great to talk to you guys.

Thank you so much for your call.

Thanks for calling, Marion.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hey there.

It’s Matt.

I’m calling in from Austin, Texas.

Welcome to the show. What’s up?

I called in and I mentioned that, you know, I always kind of think about those who have graduated recently from college and the norms and, you know, social type of normalities that we should know or don’t know when entering the workforce.

And just the kind of do’s and don’ts and what is okay and not okay in terms of just navigating the professional versus personal kind of workspace and communication facets of your job.

Are you new to the work world yourself?

I am. I just started my first real position here in Austin with Oracle, actually.

And so it’s been a great experience. I’ve been here about 25 days, and so I’m just learning every day and really enjoying it.

As, you know, a 22-year-old entering the workforce, working with a variety of different age of co-workers, you know, when it comes to, like I said, just the professional versus personal things that I would share, whether it be at work or, say, during lunch, it was really interesting because, you know, I make music personally. And so one of the things I was calling about was, you know, am I allowed to share that I make music? Is that too personal? Do my bosses want to know that I do that or should I just kind of focus on the formalities?

You mentioned something about lunch and you remind me of some research that I read by Janet Holmes.

She looks into workplace formality and the differences between the ways that we might behave with our bosses and with our peers, people that are roughly the same level.

And one of the things that she noted that is often the case in the workplace is that food changes the tone of a meeting.

For example, if food is present in a meeting, then a meeting is more likely to be informal.

When you have a formal meeting and there is food, it causes this dissonance, this problem, this conflict in people’s minds because it’s not what they’re expecting and it’s not what the tone should be.

And so food can reduce the intensity of the conversation and can take the level of seriousness down a notch.

And so sometimes people will find this old joke or saw about bringing an apple to the teacher to be true.

Bringing food to your boss can actually change the relationship with your boss.

Or bringing food to, say, the break room can actually change your relationship with your coworkers.

So a lot of this is cultural.

You have to learn just how workplaces in general operate or a specific workplace operates.

That’s super interesting.

You’re more vulnerable when you’re eating, right?

There’s something about if you’re all eating croissants that changes the tone.

That’s very interesting.

Another thing that I’m reminded of is this scene in the movie Bold Durham.

I know this is an older movie now.

Have you ever seen that movie, Matt?

I haven’t.

It’s a classic baseball flick.

It stars Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins.

There’s this scene where Tim Robbins, he’s this up-and-coming baseball pitcher, and he’s a big goofball.

And he’s got these shower shoes that are covered in fungus.

They’re the most disgusting things you’ve ever seen.

And Kevin Costner says, clean your shoes.

And Tim Robbins is like, you know, they’re colorful.

And Kevin’s like, no, you’re nobody now.

When you’re famous, they’re colorful.

Right now, they’re just disgusting.

And that’s kind of how it is in a workplace.

When you’re the boss, you’re funny.

When you’re not the boss, you’re not funny.

And so when you’re the boss.

No color.

Yeah, yeah.

When you’re the boss, you get away with a lot.

You know, you can get away with as much fungus as you want.

But when you’re a newbie or an underling, you get away with almost nothing.

That’s right.

You can tell those bad jokes if you’re the boss, right?

So there’s a lot of, like, I’ve worked in workplaces where the boss would, like, boy, everybody.

He thought he was the funniest guy in the room.

He was hilarious.

Boy, but, and you see him in another environment, like, say, in front of the board, in the board of directors.

And his jokes are dying.

They’re all just lying there flopping around like fish out of water and nothing’s working because he’s not the boss in that room.

Yeah, Matt, I think that a lot of our listeners will have other observations about trying to strike that balance, you know, where you want to be innovative, but you also want to fit in.

Right.

If you’d like to see the academic work on this, look for the work by Janet Holmes.

That’s H-O-L-M-E-S.

I believe she is from New Zealand, but she’s done some work in the U.S. as well.

And her New Zealand work is spot on as well.

So Janet Holmes, really good stuff.

It’s very approachable, even if you’re not an expert in the field.

And, of course, there’s a ton of stuff for lay people.

Most of the stuff you find in, like, your local bookstore is at least readable.

But the academic stuff tends to be more precise.

But what I’m really looking forward to is the calls and emails we’re going to get about this.

Because I know that people have really good examples of workplace communication gone right and work communication gone poorly.

We want to hear that.

We’re looking forward to that.

So, Matt, you really opened up a great topic here, and we thank you for that.

Yeah, thanks for this.

I really appreciate it, and love y’all’s work you’re doing.

Thank you.

Take care now.

Okay, keep us posted.

Thanks, Matt.

Cool.

Send your workplace stories.

How did communication go badly?

What went wrong?

What broke?

And what went well?

How did it work?

When did you come up with that magic language that just got it all working?

877-929-9673.

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Or tell us on Twitter @wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, yes, hello.

This is Suzanne, and I’m calling from Williamsburg, Virginia, but originally I am from Southern California.

And I’ve got a question about the origin of the phrase, go-aheads.

Go-aheads.

The little rubber shoes with the little thong that goes between your big toe and your next toe.

I grew up calling them go-aheads, as did all my brothers and sisters, but I have found over the years that people call them flip-flops or rubber thongs.

Wasn’t sure if that was a California phrase or perhaps one that was made up in my family, or if it’s because I’m 62 years old and it’s a phrase that’s long since passed.

No, it’s still used, but you’re right that it’s been localized mainly to California and Hawaii.

And the term go-aheads, of course, as you can imagine, I mean, you can probably guess why they’re called that, right?

I’m not sure.

I’m like, just put them on and go ahead or go forward.

I don’t know.

Yeah, you don’t want to back up in those rubber thongs.

They’ll just come right off your feet.

In Japan, they’re often called zoris.

Z-O-R-I-S.

Have you heard that one?

Yes, I have heard zoris.

Yeah, it’s still common throughout Southern California and Hawaii and Guam and a few other places.

It’s not the only term used in Hawaii and other places.

It’s like slippers, isn’t it?

Zori’s is also heard in Hawaii and California.

Right.

And it seems to have been popularized among U.S. Service members serving in the Pacific.

One thing that’s worth pointing out is that not everyone means the same kind of shoe as you do when they talk about go-aheads.

Not everyone is thinking about thongs and flip-flops, the rubber shoe with the piece that goes between the big toe and the next toe, as you put it.

Some people are thinking about grass slippers or they’re thinking about slip-on shoes or different kinds of woven shoes or just a wide variety of shoes can take that name go-ahead.

Right.

I do remember when I was a teenager, the woven shoes were very popular.

Yeah, a little more comfortable, a little wider too, right?

But, you know, looking through our email that we’ve received over the years, I see that we pretty regularly get emails about go-aheads, I’d say, a dozen times a year.

Oh, really?

I haven’t checked the phone calls lately, but I’m sure it’s probably the same frequency.

So it’s still out there.

People are still wondering about it.

You’re not alone.

Okay.

Well, I’m not crazy, and that’s what I needed to hear.

No.

I pronounce you sane.

Anytime.

I pronounce you sane and normal.

Yeah.

Tell your friends.

Thank you.

I’ll let my children know.

Well, good luck with that.

I don’t know how far you’ll get with that one, but with your friends.

Thanks for calling.

Take care.

Thank you so much.

Have a wonderful day.

Bye-bye.

All righty.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Thanks to senior producer Stefanie Levine, director Colin Tedeschi,

Editor Tim Felten, and production assistant Tamar Wittenberg.

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Who are changing the way the world talks about language.

We’re coming to you from the Recording Arts Center at Studio West in San Diego, California.

Thanks for listening.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Until next time, goodbye.

Bye.

Thank you.