Blessing Box (episode #1613)

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. And I’ve chanced upon a handy word for that awful mess of cables under my desk. The German word for that is kabelsalat. A cable salad. Exactly.

Or given your choice of operating system, maybe apple salad.

It’s a mess under there. I’m sure you have the same problem, Grant. Or apple spaghetti.

Yeah, some people do call it cable spaghetti.

Cable spaghetti.

Yeah.

Highway spaghetti is a name for a really complicated interchange.

Mm—

Yeah, yeah.

There’s Spaghetti Junction in Louisville.

There’s another Japanese term for this that translates as octopus leg wire, takawashi haisen.

And I gather that sometimes electricians call a mess of wires like that a snake’s honeymoon.

Snake’s honeymoon.

Ooh, that’s nice.

Well, we’d love to hear your funny names for those I hope no moments.

Give us a call about that or anything related to language in your life.

Language is everywhere.

877-929-9673 is toll free throughout the United States and Canada.

And if you’re anywhere else, you can call us a lot of different ways or reach us through the internet, waywordradio.org contact.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey there, this is William.

You can call me Will.

I’m calling from Dallas, Fort Worth, and I got a question for you guys.

Hi, Will. Welcome to the show.

Hey, Will.

What are you thinking about?

So a little bit of a story.

My boyfriend and I were getting into an argument.

I’m originally from California.

He grew up in Texas.

And one day I was trying to give him directions to go to a show or a store or something.

I forget.

But the point is, is I was saying, oh, you’re going to want to take the 15 to get to the store.

And he looked at me all crazy and he’s like, what do you mean?

I’m like, you know, you just take the 15 on to the north.

You know, you go south and given in all the directions.

And he stops me and goes, no, no, no.

Why did you put the in front of the highway?

I’ve never heard anybody do that before.

And we’re still arguing about this.

I put the in front of highway members and he doesn’t.

Everybody that I know in California does it, but nobody knows that thing in Texas.

And I just want to know, is there an origin to this?

Is it a regional thing?

Like, what’s going on there?

Yes and yes.

And I’m guessing you’re from Southern California, Will.

Oh, yes, I am in the sunny town of Temecula.

Temecula, sure.

Temecula, just north of San Diego.

Blind country, hot air balloons.

And you’re right to suspect that there is some history behind these differences, as often happens with language, and specifically the history of freeways in the United States and in Southern California.

You know, most places in the U.S. didn’t start getting highways until 1956 under the Eisenhower administration, or interstate highways anyway.

But 16 years earlier, California opened the first freeway in the West that connected L.A. and Pasadena.

It was called the Arroyo Seco Parkway and then later the Pasadena Freeway.

And here in San Diego, just south of Temecula, going west to east from the coast, you first had the Ocean Beach Freeway.

And then east of that, you had the Mission Valley Freeway.

And then in 1964, like elsewhere around the country, California started using numbers instead of words.

So the Ocean Beach Freeway and the Mission Valley Freeway became part of Interstate 8, which stretches on into Arizona.

And here, old habits died hard and people held on to the the.

And in the same way, the Montgomery Freeway, coming up from the border with Mexico, goes through San Diego and turned into the San Diego Freeway and continues north.

And now here in Southern California, we call it the 5.

And there are a few other places around the country that also use the.

They do that in the Phoenix area and also in Buffalo, New York, which is probably influenced by Ontario, which is very near there, because you’ll see that in Canada as well.

So people hang on to that the because of history in part.

And then things just arise independently, right, Grant?

I mean, they do this in the UK and parts of Canada as well.

Yeah, Ireland and England, people would talk about taking the M1 to go someplace.

That is so, because I suspected that it was a regional thing, considering that when I would bring it up to my Texas friends, they also looked at me in such bewilderment, too.

It’s really cool that there is such a long history with that.

That is really cool.

How do you and your boyfriend resolve this dispute?

It has yet to be resolved.

Oh, my.

This is one of the reasons why I decided to reach out so we could get some information on this.

Oh, boy.

Well, if you want to laugh together about it, Saturday Night Live did some very hilarious skits called The Californians, and they poke tremendous fun.

Oh, I love that sketch.

Yeah, just watch those together.

And if you can poke a little fun at yourself, Will, he will probably be dying with tears because they’re hilarious.

And they do make fun of the way Californians give directions with the freeways.

So maybe that’s a way to diffuse the tension over saying the 15 or the 5.

Oh, my God.

I’m glad that I now have some ammo to give an argument back to him.

Well, yeah, some information maybe.

Or maybe you just both moved back to Southern California.

What about that?

Oh, well, hey, we just visited.

Took a tour on all the wines.

He loves it.

Oh, great.

There you go.

All right, well, take care, Will.

Give our best to your boyfriend.

All right, thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Thanks, Will.

We know that you have these little ongoing arguments about language with your significant other or your loved ones.

We would love to help you sort it out.

877-929-9673 is toll-free in the United States and Canada.

And, you know, we have numbers for Mexico, the U.K., and anywhere in the world on our website.

Just go to waywordradio.org/contact.

If you know somebody with a 20th birthday coming up, you’re going to want to tuck this word away.

It’s vigesimal. That’s V-I-G-E-S-I-M-A-L. Vigesimal.

Oh, yeah. That was the word of the day for the dictionary.com app recently.

Oh, was it?

Yeah, it was.

That means related to 20.

Yeah, having to do with the number 20.

It goes back to Latin vigesimus, which is related to Spanish vente, meaning 20, and of course also in French.

Oh, yeah. That’s a wonderful word because it seems like it should be a part of the body.

Like it relates to like the length of the short intestine or something.

Right. Doesn’t it feel biological?

It absolutely does. Yes. He had a bigesimal whatever.

My vegesimal intestine or my bigesimal.

Like maybe it describes the twists and turns of the bumps on the brain or something.

The crevices of the cerebellum. I have no idea.

It does. It sounds very technical.

But I guess you could use it for, you know, if you’re talking about four score and seven years ago, that’s a vigesimal phrasing.

The vigesimal anniversary of an institution or a person.

Yeah, we got a little ways to go before the radio show gets to our vigesimal anniversary.

Yeah, that’s true.

But I’m looking forward to it.

Yeah.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Hey, that’s toll free in the United States and Canada.

We love hearing from our Canadian listeners.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha. How’s it going?

Guy Leffle.

Well, in the Upper Peninsula, we got a dialect.

It’s like if you want to go downtown, nobody says that. You say downtown.

And whenever we play baseball, it’s like, you know, you’d ask somebody, I got a hit the other day.

Well, how did you do? How was it?

And they’d go, well, I powdered it.

That translates not only to hitting, but to pitching.

It’s like if you talk to a pitcher, you know, he threw a really fast pitch.

Well, how fast was the pitch?

Well, I powdered it.

And so I just, I don’t know if you’ve heard that.

The powdered, it goes in a lot of, it has a lot of different possibilities.

Yeah, that’s classic.

That goes back at least to the early 20th century.

That’s a great term.

The idea being here that the ball moves so fast, it was like it was fired by black powder.

Like from a cannon or from a gun.

Yeah.

Although some people think at least when the pitcher powders it, maybe it’s because the catcher’s mitt throws off waves of dust.

But I think it’s more likely that it’s like it was fired by black powder.

And it might be related to older expressions like fireball or to throw smoke, which also mean fastball.

I’ll be dig on.

You ever heard of throwing smoke?

That also means power pitching.

That’s enlightening.

Yeah, it’s a good one, right?

You know, by the way, if you’re a huge baseball fan, the book for you, Guy, is Dixon’s Baseball Dictionary.

Paul Dixon’s Baseball Dictionary.

I really appreciate talking to you guys again, Mike.

And also to devote this talking to you, to Dick Burroughs in town.

He just passed away.

He was the guy, the voice of baseball and Escanama, the voice of football, the voice of everything.

And he’s just such a brilliant man.

But he was an English teacher.

He taught everybody how to talk.

And my dad was an English teacher at the college.

And it was just great.

The appreciation for English that you guys helped provide is just beyond words.

Just a million dollars.

Well, back to the man then.

Well, Guy, we appreciate the shout-out to a leader and a legend.

And we thank you for your entertainment.

Take care of yourself.

You got it, Grand Martha.

Pleasure to talk to you.

Be well.

Great talking with you, Guy.

Bye-bye.

What’s the word or phrase you’re wondering about?

Call us, 877-929-9673.

You know, sometimes you read a line in a book and it just keeps coming back to you and coming back to you.

And this happened to me recently with the book Super Infinite by Catherine Rundell.

That is the one about the poet John Donne.

There’s a line that I particularly love from that, and it keeps coming back to me when I’m out walking the dog.

She writes,

And it’s that last part.

It is an astonishment to be alive and it behooves you to be astonished.

That just, you know, you’ve got to be present.

But I do like the part about saluting, what was that, saluting death and…

Saluted corruption and death.

Saluted corruption and death because they are a part of that experience, both the positive and the negative.

But yeah, why don’t we wake up every day astonished that we have one more day upon this earth?

Yes, yes.

And we’ve created these entertainments for ourselves,

And we invite listeners to be a part of this entertainment.

Enjoy this astonishment of us,

These things that we’ve created, words on a page,

Where we tell stories to each other.

And you can be a part of it, 877-929-9673.

More about what you say and why you say it.

Stick around for more of A Way with Words.

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.

And joining us now is our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Hey, John.

Hey, Martha.

Hey, Grant.

Hey, buddy.

What’s up?

Hey, well, you know, I just got here, but I’m going to take off.

Just kidding.

What I mean is we’re going to do takeoffs.

Yeah, we’ve done this before.

These are called takeoffs.

That’s where we take off the first letter of a word to get another word, right?

Okay.

Now, this time, we’re only going to make two words by taking the letter D from the start of a word.

Only D this time, okay?

For example, if I said that my sound equipment had been damaged in the flood, that would clue the words damp and amp.

Aha.

Okay?

Now remember, the two words will always rhyme.

We’re not going to do any devil and evil.

It’s always going to be a rhyme.

Dad and ad like that.

Got it?

Got it.

Okay.

Good.

Let’s see what these clues clue.

I say my false shirt front has become disgusting.

My dicky has become icky.

Dicky and icky.

That’s very good.

And if that wasn’t enough, my lacy decorative mat has become rather oleaginous.

My oily doily.

Oily doily, yes.

And this lifeboat is no better.

It’s watertight, yes, but there’s a breeze coming in through this crack in the canopy.

A drift rift?

I don’t know.

Close.

Change the vowel and you’ve got it.

Draft raft.

Draft raft, yes.

Now this, it’s what the gutters on my rooftop do.

Drain rain.

Pay drain rain, yes.

Oh, this small baked good is quite amusing.

Not dinner roll.

Oh, so close.

Really?

Really?

This small baked good is so humorous.

Oh, it’s roll roll.

Oh, it’s so, so droll.

Oh boy.

Now I’ve determined that this Christmas ornament hangs precisely 90 degrees from its branch.

The angle dangle?

Yes, the angle dangle.

Nice.

If you think I can’t escape your clutches, you’re fooling yourself.

Elude, delude, delude, delude.

Yes, elude, delude.

Very good.

And now I acted that role to the highest degree, but I have been relegated to the chorus.

Emoted, demoted?

Yes.

Very good.

Finally, will somebody please turn this boat’s lights on?

Dark Ark? Dark Ark!

That’s good. All right.

All right. Those are our takeoffs for the letter D.

Nicely done, you guys.

Thank you. Done in one.

Done in one.

We’ll talk to you next week, John. Thank you for the quiz.

Talk to you then. Thank you.

We do a lot of goofing around on this show, but we also take your questions about all aspects of language.

So call us 877-929-9673 or send your emails to words@waywordradio.org.

Hi there. You have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Galen calling from White River, Arizona. How are you?

Hey, Galen. I’m doing fine. What’s going on?

I’m curious about a question about accents.

I grew up in Tucson, Arizona, and probably like a lot of people in high school, my friends,

And I thought we didn’t have an accent.

I realized that’s probably not true, and I realized that our accent maybe in southern Arizona

Is similar to a Los Angeles or an L.A. accent, maybe from California.

I was wondering if there’s a general TV accent that news anchors have

Or kind of this general accent and where it comes from.

It seems like a dominant accent, but I’m wondering what your thoughts are on that

And if it’s an L.A. thing from Hollywood spreading it around

Or what you guys think about that.

That’s a fantastic question.

You’re right about where your accent kind of fits into things.

People in the West generally, and I say generally, boy, the linguists are going to be hopping up and down,

Generally have one accent with a lot of caveats and a lot of little pockets of different things.

But the West is less divided dialect-wise or accent-wise than the East

Because it’s had less time to develop geographic linguistic features.

So Arizona is more like California than it would be, say, like Texas.

Or like New York. But there’s a larger picture here when we talk about accent. Maybe a better

Word to talk about is dialect, because accent is just a part of dialect. And the thing you need to

Know is everyone has an accent. It’s just by comparison is what you’re talking about. Do I

Have an accent when compared to somebody else? So do you have an accent compared to me, Grant Barrett?

Maybe not. You and I kind of sound alike. Or do you have an accent compared to, what’s somebody else, King Charles?

Yes, you have an accent because you and King Charles sound very different, right?

Sure. And so maybe I’m hearing a similar dialect.

Yeah, so it’s because you speak a similar dialect or the same dialect.

That’s when you can say, oh, I don’t have an accent.

And the unspoken part of that sentence is by comparison with this person.

So what we’re talking about here is sometimes called standard American and sometimes, yeah, called the newscaster’s accent.

The reason it exists isn’t really about Hollywood or the media, but it has more to do with notions of power, more to do with who’s in charge of wealth and education and government and money and who’s seen as authoritative and respectable.

And all of these are loaded topics in the United States.

As I’m sure you know, this is a mess.

A lot of things come into play here.

Racism and sexism and socioeconomic imbalances and indigenous suppression, Eurocentric favoritism,

Anglo-centric politics, and tons of things.

And so for a long time in the United States, a lot of textbooks,

And we’re talking back in the 1800s and 1700s and the 1900s even,

And the standard reference works were written mostly by white men from New England and the mid-Atlantic states.

And those men wrote those books according to their own habits and their own education.

And so they wrote them according to how they thought words should be said and how language should be spoken.

They didn’t give any attention really to divergent dialects that appeared in the rest of the country, even though they were already present.

I didn’t have a lot of success because obviously those dialects, other dialects didn’t disappear.

But that’s the way that they said that you should speak.

You should speak like me.

I’m from these, you know, wealthy white places.

This is how you should talk.

I think about growing up and listening to people like Tom Brokaw, you know, or Walter Cronkite.

Those were the accents that you were supposed to emulate.

Yeah, it’s funny that you should mention them.

Really, I think the classic example of this accent, which kind of covers all the bases, is Ronald Reagan, who was born in Illinois, worked in radio in Iowa, then went on to be an actor in California, and then went on to work in politics.

And his accent served him in all of these arenas because he had almost none of the dialect features that you could call him out and say, well, he’s not one of my people.

Because obviously when you listen to him, he sounds like he belongs to another region and I can’t identify with him.

So he was a really good example of the kind of neutral American accent.

There’s a subfield, though, of sociolinguistics, which I love.

It’s called perceptual dialectology.

And how it works is that a linguist will give people a map and say things like circle the area where people speak without an accent.

Or write on this map words good, bad, or neutral, where you think people’s accents sound like that.

And it’s kind of unsubtle, but you get amazing results.

Because it reveals people’s biases.

It will show you that even people from the south of the United States who have a southern accent will write that they think that the people around them don’t speak English properly.

Even people who have a regional accent will mark their own region as not being proper English, which is amazing because they’re taught that from the outside.

They’re taught that by outsiders and by the systems around them.

So your question, I mean, I could go on about this, but generally, generally, again, what is considered a standard American accent has nothing to do with linguistics.

And it’s all about power and what we see as authority.

Wow, thank you so much for the concrete example of Reagan to focus on as kind of this thing.

And then also that field of sociolinguistics to look into.

I really, really appreciate your response.

And sorry about the background noise.

I’m on lunch duty as a teacher, so you might have heard students in the background.

But we’re going to listen into this episode and others later.

Oh, wonderful.

Educators are our people, so applause to you.

Keep up the good work.

Oh, thanks for giving me so many good things to chew on and bring into the classroom.

Thanks a lot for that.

Yeah, no problem, Gayle.

Take care now and be well.

Give our best to your students.

You too.

Thanks.

We will.

Take care.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

We’d love to hear your stories about how the way you speak has affected your life, 877-929-9673.

Or tell us the story in email, words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, I learned just this week that the term redrag is an old slang word that means the tongue.

It goes back to the 17th century.

Redrag. Redrag. I don’t think I know that one. How does that work in a sentence?

Well, I’m looking at Francis Grose’s old dictionary from 1785, and there’s a citation that goes, shut your potato trap and give your red rag a holiday.

Good advice at all times.

Or here’s a more positive one from 1908.

He shook that red rag of his and a continuous flow of speech ensued.

That sounds like a few politicians I know.

Right.

Well, get your red rag shaken and call us 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Good morning. This is Linda from Cooperstown, North Dakota.

What can we do for you?

My grandmother had a saying that I’ve thought about recently, and it was, wanton waste will lead to woeful want.

Oh, what were you doing when she said that?

We were little kids, of course.

Yep. And I think she was probably from West Virginia, probably born in the late 1800s.

Were you a wasteful child?

Nope. We were pretty good because Grandma threatened with the willow switch.

Oh, the willow switch.

Wanton waste will lead to willow whopping.

Well, you might be interested to know, Linda, that this kind of alliterative advice goes back to at least the early 18th century.

The far more common version of this is willful waste makes woeful want.

And you can just hear a parent, can’t you just, it almost lends itself to sort of a sing-songy kind of willful waste makes woeful want.

And I can imagine centuries of children rolling their eyes.

Oh, yes.

Yeah, but that goes back all the way at least to a 1721 collection of Scottish proverbs.

Willful waste makes woeful want.

But, you know, there are different versions of it.

Waste not, want not.

Waste and want save and have.

Here’s another one.

Haste makes waste and waste makes want.

And want makes strife between the good man and wife.

Oh, my.

Well, Linda, this has been an insightful, delightful call.

We appreciate it.

All right.

Thank you.

All right.

Take care now.

Be well.

Thanks for calling, Linda.

Yep.

Bye.

Your time will not be wasted, and you will not go in need if you dial 877-929-9673.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

My name is Addie Mahoney.

I’m from Nino, Wisconsin.

Welcome to the show, Addie.

What can we do for you?

What’s up?

Thank you so much.

It’s wonderful to be on.

I love listening.

I was calling in about one of my grandfather’s words that he used quite often was ikampaki.

Ikampaki, I believe, if I could spell it, it would be I-C-K-I-M-P-A-C-K-Y.

Okay.

And so he would use this word for things that would be stuck in things.

Typically, if you had something stuck in your teeth, and he would say, you know, ew, Ickampacki, you can point it out on other family members.

Or if you had something on your shirt, or if something was stuck in something that you’re trying to clean out, and that would be Ickampacki, kind of an unknown substance that you kind of flick off or get off.

Ickampacki.

Wow.

Okay.

I’ve never heard that.

I’ve never heard that either.

Let me ask you, though, was he of Scandinavian descent?

No, he is not.

No Norwegians anywhere in the family?

Not that I know of.

I know you said your last name was Mahoney.

No, he was Scottish, Irish.

Too bad, because my theory was Ica is not or no in Norwegian, and I was just thinking it was not something or like not packed or something or not clumping.

Never mind then.

I did come across one thing about the word.

And it was kind of odd to me because I had just started working in as a sales manager for plumbing in the last year.

And as I was trying to find this word and find something, I came across a word.

I think you would pronounce it akum pucky.

And it is a plumbing term used for the gunk caught in the threads when you’re taking pipes apart and whatnot.

Oh, really?

And I thought.

That’s amazing.

You did astonishing work there.

How do you spell that?

I think it was spelled A-C-K-U-M-P-U-C-K-Y.

And so I found that quite interesting.

And it matches up with his Akampaki.

You know what? That’s it.

It’s in the Dictionary of American Regional English as Akampaki.

It says any of various usually sticky liquid or pasty substances, also defined as gunk, dating back to 1934.

Whoa, Annie, you’re hired.

You got a job.

You are.

And you know what’s funny?

The Dictionary of American Regional English is based right there in Wisconsin.

They would be delighted to know that they helped a Wisconsinite.

Oh, that’s really interesting.

Yeah, it’s got citations, though, all over the country, including Texas, West Virginia, Missouri, Florida, Alabama, Washington, Kansas.

So it’s not regional, but it’s got a long history.

Akampaki.

And lots of different spellings.

None of them quite like you pronounced it.

Yeah, this is fantastic.

Yes, I wasn’t sure exactly how it was pronounced.

But it ran across that little bit of a word.

And you know what’s funny is they just added this entry in 2017.

So it’s a new entry to the dictionary.

So, Addy, we’re going to hire you as the director of Ikempaki for A Way with Words.

Because this is so cool to be doing this in real time.

I’ll take the job.

Akampucky Lieutenant.

How about that?

Heck, just make you the president of Akampucky.

All right.

All right.

I would be able to keep you very, very busy with all of my grandfather’s work.

Oh, really?

Well, then we expect regular phone calls.

Report in, miss.

All right.

Many of them are completely made up, but they’re fine.

That’s fine.

Those are fun, too.

But not this one.

Not this one.

How exciting.

Thank you so much for sharing your memory with us.

And that amazing new word, akampucky, because it sounds like what it is, right?

It does sound like gunk.

It really does.

Oh, that’s good.

Well, Addie, that is going into our vocabulary right now.

Thank you so much for calling.

Wonderful, and you take care of yourself, all right?

Well, thank you, and you gave me some great information on that, and I’ll look at it further.

So thank you for having me on.

I enjoyed myself very much.

All right, take care now.

Bye-bye.

Thanks, Addie.

You too.

Yeah, bye-bye.

Call us 877-929-9673.

We talked not long ago about that dip in the road or roller coaster that causes you to lose your stomach for a second.

Some people call it a thank you, ma’am.

Some people call it a whoopsie-daisy.

And Jane Locken in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, wrote to add another to that list.

She said that when she was growing up in the La Crosse area of Wisconsin, everybody called that little dip in the road a hoopla.

A hoopla.

Yeah, so that’s like the French hoopla, where you say when you lift a kid up off the floor, a baby off the floor, or you’re hoisting something heavy.

Hoopla.

Hit us up on our website at waywordradio.org/contact, where there are more than a dozen ways to reach us no matter where you are in the world.

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.

And Grant, you remember the conversation that we had with Kelly, who was calling us from Norfolk, Virginia, where she says people order hamburgers all the way deluxe.

Right. That means they want everything on it, all the condiments and all the toppings.

And you and I said, we don’t really know anything about that.

Yeah, she was wondering if the term all the way deluxe was unique to Norfolk.

And we didn’t hear from other people who ordered things that way.

But boy, we sure got a lot of responses anyway.

Yeah, after the fact, the calls and the emails, they came pouring in.

They did.

We heard from Sarah Jones, who said where she is in South Carolina, the terms deluxe and all the whey mean two different things.

She says deluxe means mayonnaise, lettuce, and tomato, and all the whey means go ahead and add mustard and onions and whatever else.

And Richard Fitzsimmons in Pittston, PA, wrote to say that as a teenager, he and his friends would visit Ocean City, New Jersey, and they’d hang out on the boardwalk and order hot dogs and hamburgers, and they always wanted every topping available.

And the phrase that they used there was, put it through the garden.

Just run through the garden.

I’ve heard that one before.

Drag it through the garden.

That means you want all the toppings.

And this brought back so many memories for so many people.

Steve Williams wrote us from San Antonio, Texas, to say that he grew up in Bay City, Michigan.

And he says that one of his favorite summertime treats was when the family would go out to a seasonal burger joint, or maybe a family-owned eatery or diner.

He says, we’d all get cheeseburgers and fries and maybe a chocolate malt or a root beer float.

And in that neck of the woods, a deluxe cheeseburger included lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise on top of the standard toppings of mustard, ketchup, and pickle, and sometimes onion.

And he says, as I’ve grown up, I’ve traveled, and I’ve seen many menus get cute and creative with their loaded burgers with names like dumpster burger, trash burger, or everything but the kitchen sink burger.

Oh, yeah.

Well, don’t get started on garbage plates and trash plates, because those are a whole thing in some parts of the country.

Is that right?

Is that a term?

Garbage plates?

Yeah, that’s a plate.

That’s a term, yeah.

And they can be delightful.

Just imagine your nachos with everything.

It’s a huge plate.

And it really looks like they cleaned out the last of the chili bowl and the last of the salsa jar and the scrapings from the bottom of everything on the condiment table.

It can be really good, though, because every single one of those is delightful to the taste buds.

But we have yet to hear from anybody else who orders things all the way deluxe.

I wonder if it really is specific to Norfolk.

Yeah, Norfolk, Virginia might just have their own thing, and that’s not unheard of.

We have regionalisms all across the United States and Canada and elsewhere in the world, so no matter what language you speak, it’s English or Spanish or something else.

And we love hearing about regionalisms.

It’s just one of the ways that we identify ourselves.

We know who we are and where we come from.

So tell us who you are, where you come from, and what your regionalisms are.

877-929-9673.

That’s toll-free in the United States and Canada.

Or email words@waywordradio.org.

And if you want some other way to reach us, there are at least a dozen more.

Find them at waywordradio.org contact.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Oh, hi. Good morning. My name is Mike Roberts, and I’m from Ukiah, Northern California.

And I have a saying that I’ve heard many times about somebody knowing their onions.

And then after calling you initially, I Googled, and it was from knowing onion rings, it’s Cockney rhyming slang for things.

So I found that very interesting because I’m from London, born and raised in London.

And then I also found out that rhyming slang started in the 1840s, but there was no record of it being used, no literary record until 1922.

So I was looking for an earlier record.

Yeah. Okay, so let’s break this down.

So you’re talking about to no one’s onions, and that means…

No one’s business. Yeah, to know what you’re talking about.

And you knew this from your time in London, where you grew up?

Right, I’ve never heard of it after since.

Yeah, it’s not well known in the United States, although one time it was.

You would find it in the United States in the early 1900s.

I’ve got a cocked eyebrow out here. I’m super suspicious of that origin story.

I’m not going to discount it because I haven’t seen your source, but generally know your onions is thought to be just a part of a whole grocery store worth of other expressions that are involved produce.

You could know your beans and know your apples, sweet potatoes, vegetables, eggs, cucumbers, oats, bananas, goods, fruit, groceries, oil.

All of these things have been expressions, all of the means to know what you’re talking about.

And the earliest ones that I know of is to know your beans or to know beans from the 1840s.

Right, right.

There is a French expression from the early 20th century, and it’s about the same age as to know one’s onions, a little newer.

S’occuper de ses oignons.

It translates as to mind your onions, and it means to mind your own business.

So it’s not quite the same meaning.

So it’s possible that there’s an overlap or a transference happening in one direction or the other.

But in any case, we think our prevailing theory is to know your onions is simply one of these mini expressions that means to mind your business.

And it simply has to do with being able to go to the marketplace and recognize quality produce when you saw it.

And I think that it probably isn’t rhyming slang.

However, I’m open to new evidence.

And if I find new evidence that it is rhyming slang, I will let everyone know.

Okay?

Okay.

Very good.

Well, thank you very much.

All right.

Mike, thank you so much for calling. We appreciate it.

No, it’s my great, great pleasure to be on the radio as well.

I love your show. Thank you so very much.

Thanks so much.

Bye-bye.

Okay, bye-bye.

So we know about free libraries.

These are where you leave books for your neighbors to take.

They leave books for you to take. And there are also seed libraries. I’ve seen those where people leave seeds, local native seeds. Yeah, there’s one in my neighborhood. It’s lovely. It’s all California native seeds that you can plant in your yard or your garden. And there’s a name that I came across for another box of this sort. The boxes where you leave canned goods for people in need are sometimes now called blessing boxes.

Oh, no kidding.

Blessing box.

Yeah, I think that’s a good term for it.

If you’re blessed with good fortune, you share some of that good fortune with your neighbors or other people who are passing by and don’t have what you have.

A blessing box.

What a cool term.

Yeah, it’s a good term.

Well, we invite you to leave a little something for us in our email box, words@waywordradio.org.

Hi there. You have A Way with Words.

Hi. This is Rachel.

Hi, Rachel. Where are you calling from?

Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.

Welcome. What can we do for you?

Thank you.

I was just interested in finding out a little more about something that I’ve always heard, which was a lot of older couples I hear call each other mother and father, and I wondered why that was.

They use this as names for each other.

Like the man will call the woman mother and the woman will call the man father.

Yeah.

And is this something you hear in your family or do you work with a lot of folks who do this?

I’ve never heard it in my family.

I’ve heard it in other people’s family and I’m a nurse. So I’ve worked with a lot of elderly over the years and I’ve heard it between them.

Do you get a sense that it happens to couples that have children?

Some of them have children. Others, I don’t think that they did. Or maybe they had children in the past.

How do you feel about it?

Are you just curious or do you have feelings one way or the other?

I mean, I don’t really have any ill feelings towards it or anything like that. I’m just a little thrown off by it.

Okay.

Because I’m not used to hearing it from my generation or anything like that.

Yeah, I’m glad you asked about it because there’s always a little more to this sort of thing than first meets the eye.

Occasionally people will comment on this sort of thing where two adults call each other mama or papa or mother and dad or mother and father.

And talk about a sense of a loss of identity or that somehow the claim of parenthood has somehow usurped the role between a married couple.

And they’re no longer calling each other husband and wife or pet names between them that talk about their relationship without any reference to children or offspring.

But one thing I should say is it’s not necessarily generational. It’s more likely to be the kind of thing that is cultural, passed along almost as a family way.

That is, something that you heard done by your grandparents or your relatives and that you learned to do just because you’ve seen it done, and not necessarily regional or geographical.

We know that it at least goes back as far as the 1850s because Charles Dickens used it in his book Little Dorrit, which was published in 1855.

I asked about whether or not they have children because for many cases, it’s because when you’re talking about your spouse in front of very young children, you use the name for your spouse that the children are most likely to understand. So when my son was very little, I wouldn’t say Sarah, my wife’s name, in front of my son. I would say mama because that’s what he calls her.

And so after a few years of that, it kind of stuck.

And even now that he’s 15 and probably already taller than me, it still seems a little weird to call her by her name in front of him.

I just call her Mama.

And only when we’re in front of outsiders do I catch myself.

And I’m like, oh, yeah, it’s weird to say Mama across the table in front of her father, you know.

It does seem very odd.

But amongst the three of us, it is a special name for her that only two people in the whole world get to call her.

And, you know, it doesn’t only happen in English.

Other languages and other cultures do the same thing.

And it happens to grandparents as well.

My mother and father went from being mom and dad to pop and Grammy.

And I even now call my mother Grammy when we’re around and my son is around because that’s how he knows her.

Even though for my whole life, until he was born, I called her mom.

That makes sense.

That was pretty informative.

I didn’t really think of it that way.

So it’s nice to know where it came from.

Thank you.

All right.

Take care of yourself.

Bye.

Bye, Rachel.

Call us to talk about any aspect of language whatsoever, 877-929-9673, or send us an email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Fernando Rivas from San Antonio, Texas.

Welcome to the show.

What can we do for you?

I actually am calling because I wanted to know about a word that I use a lot at work, and I didn’t quite know where it came from.

Great.

What do you do?

I’m an art preparator.

I’m a contract art preparator, so I work at different galleries.

Right now I’m at the Briscoe Western Museum of Art, but I do other galleries, other museums as well.

And I do a lot of art handling, moving pieces on and off the walls, preparing them for shipment, and then getting the galleries ready.

Once a new show is going to start, we have to paint the walls.

And it’s a lot of fun.

I get to touch the art.

Wow, cool.

Yeah, no guard to stop you.

That’s cool.

So what’s the language?

What’s the question that you had?

We have a painting term called a holiday.

When you’re applying paint, often with a roller, if you apply the paint a little bit unevenly with your weight, like weight distribution is a bit uneven, it’ll cause a little bit of a line of drip, of excess paint to drip.

And from the very beginning, my first gig at Blue Star Contemporary, Keaton Forman, my technician, the gallery head there, told me, go fix a holiday that you left over there on whatever wall.

And I didn’t know what he meant.

But since that time, I’ve had a few painting jobs in a few different museums and whatnot, and it’s used often.

Fernando, this is great. There’s an amazing history behind this word. Would you believe me if I told you it goes back to the 1700s?

Absolutely not. I think you’re lying.

We’re talking about this specific holiday, not the holiday where you take a day off from work, but the holiday related to a gap or a space or a neglected area when you’re trying to apply an even coating.

As you note, it’s often a space when painting, but more often it’s a space missed, not a drip, not too much paint, but it’s a space that you’ve left a little bit off.

And not just when painting, but like in the original use was shipbuilding when they were tarring the bottom of a boat.

If they didn’t apply tar to the whole bottom of a boat, that was called a holiday.

Wow, that’s fascinating.

It’s been used many different industries, a lot of different ways, but always refers to something that isn’t consistent with the surrounding area.

So either it’s a gap or a hole or it’s thinner there.

So even in logging, like, you know, cutting timber, it can be an open area in the woods or a glade where the trees are thinner or there aren’t any trees.

In lots of industries, it’s just a job that has gone undone where you’ve done everything except this one part of the job.

And that’s a holiday.

During World War II, when they were mine sweeping, when they were looking for enemy mines on the floor of the ocean, they called the part of the ocean floor where they didn’t sweep for mines the holiday.

Or even domestically.

If you’re having somebody clean your house and they’re dusting, you’ll say don’t leave any holidays. I’d love to know where that came from because that’s way deeper than I thought.

In life, a holiday is something out of the usual. Ordinarily, you’re working a lot. You’re doing your daily business, and every day is like every other day. But a holiday is when all bets are off, and the date isn’t ordinary. So that’s why it’s called a holiday. It’s unusual. It’s exceptional. That’s it. It’s just not the way things ordinarily go, and that’s why it’s called a holiday. How about that? Wow. That’s something.

So 300 years this word has been around, and you have just the latest version of it. So cool. Thank you for that. That’s way deeper than I thought it would be. Well, you touched one of my favorite things. This is why I love doing this job. I love the jargon of the trades and the aha moments, and now you can share that with your colleagues. Yeah. Fernando, thank you so much. Thank you.

Well, is there a word at work that you keep running into and you keep puzzling over it and you talk with your coworkers about it and they just can’t figure it out and neither can you? We can help. 877-929-9673 or send it to us an email. The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Our team includes senior producer Stefanie Levine, engineer and editor Tim Felten, and quiz guide John Chaneski. We’d love to hear from you, no matter where you are in the world. Go to waywordradio.org/contact. Subscribe to the podcast, hear hundreds of past episodes, and get the newsletter at waywordradio.org.

Whenever you have a language story or question, our toll-free line is open in the U.S. and Canada, 1-877-929-9673. Or send your thoughts to words@waywordradio.org. A Way with Words is an independent production of Wayword, Inc., a nonprofit supported by listeners and organizations who are changing the way the world talks about language. Special thanks to Michael Breslauer, Josh Eckels, Clare Grotting, Bruce Rogow, Rick Seidenwurm, and Betty Willis. Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette. And I’m Grant Barrett. Until next time, goodbye. Bye. Thank you.