Care Package (episode #1511)

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.

If you have a kid in college or a loved one overseas, it’s nice to send them a CARE package, right? Because it shows that you care.

Exactly.

But you might be surprised to learn that the CARE in CARE package started out as an acronym.

What?

In 1946, CARE stood for Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe. And this was an organization of civic groups that had formed to fight poverty and hunger in the wake of World War II.

And this organization called CARE distributed millions of packages that contained things like dried milk and canned meat and margarine.

Yeah.

Lots of spam.

Probably, yeah.

And a few comfort items like chocolate and coffee.

And initially, people in this country, in the United States, would pay a fee to have a care package sent to family or friends back in Europe. But as time went on, people started donating money to have packages go to anyone in need in Europe.

They would arrive addressed simply to a schoolteacher in Germany, or I like this one, to a hungry occupant of a thatched cottage.

Isn’t that lovely?

How adorable is that? Sending these packages off across the sea. To do their good deeds in the empty void of somewhere else.

Yeah.

And CARE went on to become one of the largest humanitarian organizations in the world doing anti-poverty work. And along the way, it’s changed its name a couple of times.

It went from the Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe to the Cooperative for American Relief Everywhere. And it’s now known as the Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere.

And anyway, that’s the inspiration behind the CARE package that we give today.

That’s very cool.

Now, the question is, did they name the organization to fit the word CARE, or is it the other way around?

Good point.

I said acronym, but it’s probably better described as a backronym, right?

Right.

They found the word CARE, decided they wanted to use it, and then named it themselves so that it would match up.

But I was really surprised to learn that story. It wasn’t until the early 1960s that we started using the term CARE package as something that you would give to. Just generically, like the thing that you would send your kid in college.

Yeah, yeah, or that you leave on the desk of somebody who’s having a bad day or something.

This makes me want to go watch or re-watch that really lovely movie, 34 Charing Cross Road.

Oh, I haven’t seen that.

Relationship between a woman in the UK and a man in New York, and it’s after the war, and he sends her stuff. He sends her packages of things, and they have a correspondence back and forth.

And there’s a book, too.

Oh, yeah, yeah, I read the book.

But it’s very lovely.

Yeah.

Language has a story behind every part of it. Call us and we’ll explore it with you.

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Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, this is Danielle. I’m calling from Los Angeles, California.

Hey, Danielle. Thanks for calling. What can we do for you?

Here is my question. When did we start nicknaming decades by their 10th place? For example, the 1920s is known as the 20s or the 1960s as the 60s. Do we do this in the 19th century or in centuries before? And if so, and if the past is any indication, will we see the 2020s be referred to as the 20s? And how we make the distinction between these 20s and the 20s in the past.

Danielle, what got you to wondering about that?

We’re kind of in this weird period where we don’t really know what to call this decade, and I feel like there hasn’t been much consensus about it, and I was thinking about the future as well.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

I do know that they did go by decades in the 1800s, in the 19th century. So you will see in old newspapers, they’ll talk about the 1870s or the 1890s or the 1830s or what have you. You can just find it in old newspapers, no problem.

Prior to that, I’ve never seen it. I’ve looked, but it’s hard.

But I think what you probably would need is personal letters, wouldn’t you say, Martha?

That probably is where you’re really going to get that casual speech.

Yeah, where else will you get that documentation?

Yeah.

So people have been abbreviating. Because we naturally round up to 10 or round down to 10, right? 10 fingers, 10 toes. We like round numbers as a species.

I think every language that I’ve ever studied, their number system whatsoever, they like to round. They approximate. And some approximate a heck of a lot more than others.

So, yeah, it’s been going on for at least 100 plus years, 150 years, 200.

All right.

Yeah.

Is that it?

That’s all you wanted?

Well, no. I was wondering how we make the distinction between, you know, the decade that’s coming up and the 1920s, because I feel like we kind of refer to the 20s as, you know, the roaring 20s. And I don’t know exactly what characteristic will define this next decade, but before we know that, will we be referring to it as the 20s?

Oh, right. As we did say in the 90s when we were saying things like, it’s the 90s.

Right, or the gay 90s from the 19th century.

But that’s a good question. Is this set of 20s going to be roaring or is it going to be roaring at each other?

A lot of ink has been spilled on this. This comes up so often, even in linguistic circles, because it’s fun bar talk, really, as a linguist or a lexicographer to guess what’s going to happen to language. And frankly, it’s a crapshoot. You don’t really know. You don’t know until it’s over.

And there’s no one person or organization that has a say in it. It’s just whatever catches the world’s fancy. Whatever becomes faddish and sticks.

It seems like nothing really stuck with the first decade.

Right.

Yeah, exactly.

Nothing did. Although what’s interesting is people kind of call it the 2000s, and they don’t mean the whole millennium. They mean just that first 10 years.

Right.

And one other thing that’s happening, this is the strongest prediction that I’ve heard, and I think there’s a lot of sense to it. We have this great era of 20-something. So 2020, the decade of 2020s is probably going to end up being the nickname of the 2020s.

Right.

It’s just too perfect. It’s about perfect vision. It’s got rhyme. It’s got repetition. The 2020s. People are just going to call it, probably going to call it the 2020s.

I think we had the roaring 20s in the 20th century. I think in the 21st century, we’re going to have the hot 20s. I don’t think you can call it anything else but the hot 20s because of global warming.

Oh, okay.

And whatever else is going on.

Maybe.

The toasty 20s. How about the toasty 20s?

But these things are settled well after the fact. Some decades, for example, nobody calls the 1880s anything commonly as far as I know. There’s some decade names that don’t really stick.

The only ones that I know that stuck in the 1900s were the me decade, the roaring 20s, and maybe the, that’s it, pretty much the only ones I can think of. The 60s are just kind of known as the 60s, aren’t they?

So clearly, Danielle, what you’re going to need to do is call us in about 20 years.

Yeah.

Right.

And we can check in and just.

Well, hopefully we’ll have reached a consensus by then.

All right. Well, thanks for your call, Danielle. Thank you very much. We really appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you. Take care. Big fan of the show. Have a good evening.

Bye-bye.

Appreciate it.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Some friends and I were talking about a friend who had a painful bout with shingles.

Oh, yeah. You know, that’s that painful rash. The reason it’s called shingles is actually pretty cool. It comes from the Latin cingulum, which means belt. And usually when shingles appears, it’s a stripe of blisters that wraps around just part of your body, right about where you might have a belt.

Oh, interesting.

Isn’t that wild? And then just got corrupted from the Latin into English?

Yep.

That’s pretty interesting.

Exactly.

So it has nothing to do with shingles on a roof.

Nothing.

No, no, no.

No, and what’s actually really cool is that it goes back to an old Latin word that means to gird or surround.

And you see the same root of cingulum in words like precinct, which has a boundary drawn around it, and cinch, you know, like you cinch a saddle on a horse.

Right, gotcha.

Well, that’s pretty cool.

Yeah.

How about that?

Hit us up, words@waywordradio.org, or talk to us on Twitter @wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi, who’s this?

Aya.

Aya, where are you calling from?

Virginia.

Virginia.

Well, welcome to the show.

Do you have a question for us, Aya?

I wanted to know if high and dry is a good thing or a bad thing.

Is high and dry a good thing or a bad thing?

Huh.

Well, what got you two wondering about that, Aya?

Because a week ago we called one of our families and we asked if they were high and dry because there was a storm coming.

Okay.

And so you wanted to know if they were safe.

I thought it was a bad thing.

Oh.

Oh.

So what do you think high and dry means?

I think it’s a bad thing because it’s not good to leave something when you just started it.

You leave your partner high and dry.

Oh.

That is a good life lesson.

You nailed it, Aya.

It’s not good to leave people stranded, is it?

Nope.

Aya, this is an excellent question.

Thank you for asking it.

So, Aya, the thing is that high and dry can mean a couple of different things.

It can be a good thing.

It can be a good thing if something is safe.

Like if your friends are high and dry and they’re away from the flooding, then they’re safe.

But if you’re a fish, you don’t want to be high and dry.

Or if you’re a boat that’s supposed to be in the water, but the storm throws you up on the hill far inland.

Or a mermaid.

Right, or a mermaid.

Or a mermaid, exactly.

No, she doesn’t want to be thrown into the land, right?

She would be high and dry, and that’s not where she belongs.

Yeah.

So your idea that it’s bad is sometimes true, but it’s also sometimes good.

Thank you.

Yeah, so the answer is basically that it depends on the situation.

Yeah, you always have to listen to the words around it.

The sentences that are being said near high and dry.

To really understand what someone means when they say high and dry.

Thank you.

Good.

Thank you for your call.

Thank you for talking to us, Aya.

Thank you.

You’re welcome.

Call us again sometime.

Okay, I love you guys.

I love you too.

Bye-bye.

Oh, I love you too.

Take care now.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

This program is for everyone, no matter their age or background.

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

We talked on an earlier show about slang terms for walking someplace, rather than taking a car or a bus.

Like shanks mare and chevro legs and things, Pat and Charlie.

Yes, yes.

I’ll get there on Pat and Charlie meaning your legs.

Right.

And we heard from Sarah Widener in Fairbanks, Alaska, who said she’s heard the young people using the expression shoelace express, which I really like.

That too, yeah.

Yeah, it’s always a good alternative.

Yeah.

877-929-9673.

More about 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 Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

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

Hello, John.

Hey, Martha.

Hey, Grant.

Hey, bud.

What’s up?

We have done quizzes, all sorts of quizzes here.

We’ve done quizzes about monkeys, bees, dogs, all sorts of animals.

I thought maybe it was time to do one about cats.

Now, I don’t particularly care for cats, but that’s okay because cats don’t particularly care for me.

Because I’m not a cardboard box.

Anyway, I’ll give you a snarky feline clue to a word that starts with C-A-T.

You give me the word.

For example, you know, cats are really stuck in the 20th century.

They don’t even order merchandise from websites.

They get their clothes from where?

Catalogs?

Yeah, catalog.

Right.

Yeah.

Now, here are more, unfortunately.

When cats visit Paris, they pretty much only like to hang out in what famous underground landmark?

The catacombs.

The catacombs, right.

Because they eschew the beach, they prefer the mountains.

In the summers, they go to resorts in what area of the Appalachians in southern New York State?

Catskills.

The Catskills, yeah.

That’s why they like the movie Dirty Dancing, too.

Oh, and did I mention cats do like movies?

Of course they do.

They really like Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Gremlins because they’re part of what actor’s filmography?

Phoebe Cates.

Phoebe Cates, yes.

Oh, tricky.

She’s married to Kevin Kline.

The cats hate him.

Now, perhaps my being anathema to cats is because I’m allergic to them, maybe.

Or maybe they’ve inspired in me a medical condition in which my nose and throat are blocked with mucus.

What is that again?

Katar.

Katar.

Of course, the Egyptians, they worship cats.

Kind of redundant since cats worship themselves.

I’m sure they would build themselves what kind of large church if they had opposable thumbs?

Cathedral.

A cathedral, right.

Maybe they should build a cathedral and study up on religion.

They have all that free time lying around.

They could read up on religious doctrine in the form of questions and answers.

What do we call that again?

Catechism.

Catechism, yeah.

I spent my time learning catechisms.

Have you ever seen the musical Cats?

No.

Cats love theater mostly because many theaters have raised platforms way up in the rafters that they can get around on.

You know what those are?

Catwalks.

Of course, catwalks.

Yeah.

And oh, oh, those cats are tricky too.

Once you think you finally have their meow language figured out,

They go and switch to a romance language used in eastern Spain.

Catalan.

Catalan.

Els gatsan furtivum.

I guess that’s how you pronounce it.

Anyway, yes, Catalan, very good.

You guys did fantastic on your cat quiz.

Do you really dislike cats?

No, I don’t dislike cats.

Yeah, John, let’s talk about this.

Is this just a conceit for the quiz?

No, it’s a conceit to make the quiz interesting.

You’re actually an illurophile.

I’m going to lure a file, yes, I do.

You like kitties.

Okay, good.

I would have a cat if I could.

I will.

Because just clarifying this is stopping a lot of angry letters.

A lot of angry letters.

No letters.

No, no.

Cats are great.

Cats are really cool.

They’re very independent.

Thank you.

They drive themselves to work.

It’s wonderful.

Thank you for the quiz.

It was not a catastrophe.

I think we all did well.

Thanks, guys.

See you next time.

Bye, John.

Well, we’d love to catalog your questions about language, 877-929-9673.

And if it’s a catalyst to get you to write, you can put as much as you want in an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Adair. I’m calling from Fort Worth, Texas.

Well, welcome, Adair. What can we do for you?

So my mom, a couple weeks ago, used a very strange phrase that I’d never heard before.

And she was using it to describe this experience she had on a road trip with my dad.

And they were in Louisiana, and the roads were really bad.

It was nighttime, and it was raining, and she said,

Oh, honey, it was so scary.

Your dad and I almost bought the ranch a couple times.

I was like, bought the ranch? What does that mean?

I understood what she meant by the context.

I understood that she thought she was going to crash,

But I just was like, what is a ranch doing in a car story?

I don’t understand.

Did she feel like she was going to die?

Yes.

Okay.

So it was very serious.

Yes, and she was driving, which made it even scarier.

And that was new to you, to have someone to say, I nearly bought the ranch.

That was a new experience for you.

Yeah, and it was even, I mean, maybe I’ve heard it before, but I couldn’t recall ever hearing it.

And what was even stranger is I’d never heard her use it before.

And I feel like with these phrases you hear, you know, your mom or dad use, they’ve used it many, many times before.

But it was completely new to me.

Well, we can sort this through for you.

Thank you.

There’s a more common variant of this, which is to buy the farm. Do you know that one?

I’ve heard that, but I didn’t immediately make the connection.

Okay. So as far as a word historian would be concerned, they’re considered the same, just a variance of each other.

And there’s an interesting history that goes back to World War II and earlier, where when aircraft would crash, the pilot might be said to have bought it. And usually it meant that they died.

And there was another form to buy a packet. And the packet in this case, it’s uncertain what it refers to, but the best sources that I know say if you bought a packet, you were buying passage for your body to be sent home by packet ship. So from wherever the front was.

In any case, by the 1950s, to buy it had showed up in American English as the longer form of to buy the farm. And there’s some stories out there that I won’t repeat here because they really don’t have a lot of evidence.

But the best explanation for this is when you buy the farm, it means that you’re taking the dirt nap. You are getting that six-foot-deep plot of land that you are going to lie in for eternity. That’s your farm, a worm farm.

Mmm, so grim.

Yeah, it is grim. Indeed. Absolutely grim.

So it’s all about the final resting place in the earth that you would have if you died, if something bad were to happen.

Fascinating. And, you know, it’s interesting. So I resisted Googling this phrase, but my husband could not because we were talking about it.

And a couple nights ago, we took our grandmothers to dinner, and we were kind of hashing out this phrase. And I said, you know, have you guys heard this phrase, bought the ranch? And they go, oh, yeah, bought the farm.

And it actually led into a conversation about wartime in World War II.

Wow. So that makes a whole lot of sense.

Absolutely. Nice. So they heard it during that period of time?

Mm— And that’s the first time that they could recall hearing that phrase, and specifically bought the farm.

There is one story out there that I want to kind of squash a little bit, even though there are some slang authorities who like it. And it’s the idea that the term comes from that if a plane were to crash on somebody’s land, say a farmer’s land, then the ruin caused would allow the farmer to sue the military or the Air Force and then get reparations in order to pay off their mortgage for the land, which is entirely too complicated for that to be the truth.

It really is just about that plot of land, which can jokingly be called your farm or your ranch, which is where your body lies with the tombstone above.

Wowza. What an interesting parade.

I knew you guys would think of something. Adair, we’re so glad you called. We’re glad your mom’s okay. Tell her hi for us.

She’s fine. She just gets nervous driving at night.

Well, tell her hi and everybody else, the grandmothers. Take care.

I will.

All right. All right. Thank you guys so much.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye, Adair.

Bye.

877-929-9673.

In the late 19th century, there was a popular British comedian named Arthur Roberts who did sort of burlesque and silly songs. And one of his big hits was Daddy Wouldn’t Buy Me a Bow Wow.

I’m bringing Arthur Roberts up because he is the guy credited with, if not coining, popularizing the word spoof.

Oh, spoof as a gag making fun of someone else?

Well, or a trick or a hoax.

Okay. Nobody knows exactly the game that he popularized or invented. It’s not a card game, but some kind of game that involved a lot of nonsense and trickery. That’s where we get the word spoof.

And the reason I’m thinking about the word spoof is because I got neighbor spoofed. Spammers will take your phone number and they can program their caller ID to make it look like. They spoof it. They fake it.

Yeah, they fake it. And so I got a call from a very nice man who said, did you call me? And I said, no. And he said, well, you got neighbor spoofed because your caller ID is showing up on my phone.

Right. Yeah. And apparently it doesn’t last very long because they just move on to somebody else. But this is a thing. Neighbor spoofing.

Well, I’ve got Apple spoofed. For a while there, the spam calls were just ridiculous. Were all phone numbers belonging to Apple stores around the country.

Really? Which you might actually want to answer because you might be thinking, like, oh, that’s weird. An Apple store would be calling me. I’m an Apple user. Maybe there’s some reason that they would be calling me.

But, yeah, they went kind of around the map. And I just got them boom, boom, boom, one after the other.

Oh, gosh. But, yeah, that’s the story with neighbor spoofing, too. If they’re calling you, they’re calling with a number that looks like it could be your neighbor, somebody in the same area.

Yeah, same area code. Area code and all that. Technology gives us the good words and the bad.

877-929-9673.

Hello. Welcome to A Way with Words.

Hi. This is Lacey from Virginia Beach.

Hi, Lacey. Welcome to the show. What can we do for you?

I just wanted to share a phrase that my in-laws use a lot. My husband and his family are from Lebanon. So in their home, Arabic is their first language.

And a phrase that is used a lot that I wanted to share is, it means, literally, the translation is, may you bury me, which is interesting. But it’s used in the same instance that we might say something like maybe to a child that’s like really, really cute. You would say like, oh, I could just eat you up or, you know, you’re so cute, you just kill me.

It’s that same kind of idea, that sentiment of just like a baby or a child is really adorable and you just can’t stand it. And it sounds maybe a little morbid, may you bury me, but it’s really kind of a blessing of long life. Like, may you outlive me. May you have a long life. May you bury me.

So that’s, yep, born me.

Well, that’s lovely. And is that just a parent to a child, or could you say that to any cute little child?

Any cute little child. And it’s not necessarily children, you know, but it’s definitely that term of endearment. It’s kind of just adorable, you know. It’s kind of synonymous with just almost you just can’t stand it. It’s just so cute is kind of when you would use that.

And so your husband uses this with you?

Sometimes with me, but we have been hearing it a lot more often because we had a son about nine months ago, the first grandbaby for my husband’s family. So definitely the baby hears it a lot from his grandparents and from my husband and myself sometimes as well.

And your husband’s family, they’re from?

They’re from Lebanon.

Lebanon, okay, right, gotcha. And is this used in other parts of the Middle East, perhaps in nearby countries like Syria?

You know, it may be. There are, you know, in a lot of different places where Arabic is the primary language spoken, a lot of times the language may be considered the same, but the dialect may be a little bit different. So I imagine there are other, you know, areas, maybe Egypt, that have a very similar, if not, you know, the same kind of sentiment shared.

But, yeah. Say it one more time for us, will you?

Yapurni.

Yapurni. Something like that. Is there kind of a glottal thing happening in the first syllable?

Yeah. After the yap, there’s a little symbol if you see it written, and it kind of means kind of a harsh stop. It catches in your throat kind of?

Yeah, a little bit. So like yapurni, like a B-O-R-N-E is maybe how I would spell it phonetically. Like Y-A and then kind of a little apostrophe, like a stop, and then B-O-R-N-E, like, ya borne.

It’s such a beautiful phrase, sort of the circle of life right there in just a couple of words. It reminds me of a phrase from Arabic that translates as, may my last day dawn before yours.

Ooh, nice.

Oh, that’s lovely.

Yeah. Thank you for sharing that, Lacey.

My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

All right, take care. Call us again sometime.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

I first saw this phrase with a different transliteration into English, in a book by Tim Lomas, L-O-M-A-S. It’s called Translating Happiness Across Cultural Lexicon of Well-Being. And it’s not really a dictionary so much as an exploration of these positive words and positive kind of expressions used in languages around the world. And he’s really looking for this kind of language that can demonstrate to you a little bit of hope, right? The language that you can use that suggests that the relationships that you have where people are bound by love more than they’re bound by conflict. And I really enjoyed that perspective. It’s Translating Happiness by Tim Lomas.

What are the expressions that your family uses to express something really powerful? Let us know, 877-929-9673, or send us an email. That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, welcome to Way With Words.

Hi, this is Matt from Dallas, Texas.

Hi, Matt. Welcome to the show. What can we do for you, Matt?

I grew up in western North Carolina, and there was a word that I would hear frequently from what I would call locals there. And it was a word that they would use in place of, like, saying something as a mess, but it was gom, G-O-M. And I had never heard this anywhere else, and it was just a strange kind of, I guess, local thing. But they would use it in different forms. Like they would say someone is gomming around or something is gommed up. Or even just calling someone someone is a gomm. And I’ve never heard of that before, and I just thought it was pretty interesting.

Yeah, gomm meaning to smear or make dirty, something like that.

Yeah, and in many different kind of formats of being something gommed up.

Yeah, I just never heard of it at any other place.

Oh, really? Really? Because it’s found pretty much in that area. West Virginia, Kentucky, western North Carolina. And it comes from an old word that I think just has to do with dirt, to gom something up.

Is it related to gum, G-U-M?

I don’t think so. No, but it’s usually spelled G-A-U-M.

Oh, G-A-U-M, okay.

-huh. Yeah. And if you’re gomming around, then you’re misbehaving.

Messing around.

Yeah, messing around. Yeah.

Yeah. It was very, and the area that we were in was very, very kind of rural Appalachia. So I guess that fits in with that whole region through there.

-huh. It’s well attested, well documented in that particular area, but not much of any place else. But gomming around.

Gomming around, definitely.

There was also another word in that area that I heard, the use of T-H-E-Y, they, as an exclamation.

Yeah, give us an example.

Our next-door neighbor got a new car, and another neighbor of ours said, when they saw it, they go, they, that’s a beautiful new car. That was their, wow, exclamatory statement. T-H-E-Y.

And would they make any kind of gesture or?

Nothing in particular other than just, you know, a generalized wow.

Well, again, this seems to be a North Carolina, North Georgia expression.

Probably is a variant of the word there.

Like there.

Yeah.

Look at there.

Something like that.

Okay, yeah.

Sometimes people say they God or they Lord or something like that.

Okay.

Yeah, an expression of amazement that you don’t hear much of any place else. There are a few places in English where we do use there and here as interjections like that, right?

Yeah.

We’ll say there, I’m all finished. And I don’t mean there in that spot. It could be something that’s far away from me. Or here now, what are you doing?

Yeah.

Yeah, or my father was from Western North Carolina and he would say here.

Here.

Here.

Oh, yeah.

Would you hear that?

Yeah, I’ve actually heard that, definitely.

Well, cool, Matt. Thank you so much for your call. We really appreciate it, buddy.

All right.

Thank you very much.

All right.

Take care.

All righty.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org or talk to us on Twitter @wayword.

Following up on our conversation about different ways to describe walking, Andrea Reid from Reno, Nevada, wrote that the term she used growing up was taking the ten-toed mule.

Okay.

Good.

I get that.

Ten-toed mule.

Ten-toed mule.

Gotcha.

Let us know what you’re thinking about in terms of language. 877-929-9673 or send your emails to 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.

This summer, I went on one of the best trips I’ve ever taken. A friend and I visited the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. And there we learned that between the years of 1877 and 1950 in this country, more than 4,400 African-American men, women, and children were lynched by white mobs. And this new memorial there is a way of preserving their stories. And I have to tell you, Grant, it was one of the most profoundly moving, incredibly eloquent works of public art I’ve seen anywhere. It’s sort of abstract, but it engages the visitor in a way that’s so brilliant and so powerful that I hesitate to describe it in detail because everybody who goes there is going to have their own experience. All I can say is that if you have the opportunity to get to Montgomery, start with the affiliated legacy museum that chronicles the whole African-American experience and then visit the memorial and afterwards stop by the Rosa Parks Museum, which is there at Troy University.

And of course, while I was there, I found myself wondering about the origin of the word Lynch. And it turns out that the word Lynch is an eponym. It derives from somebody’s name. The most likely story is that it comes from the name of a Captain William Lynch of Pennsylvania, Virginia. And in 1780, he had his own law and order group of vigilantes who administered their own justice outside the courts during the American Revolution. And usually what that meant is that they would seize somebody and punish them either by flogging them or tarring and feathering them, not killing them. And soon after that, we see the term lynch law in reference to people taking justice into their own hands. And it took a few years before lynching came to apply specifically to a mob actually executing somebody. And usually, as you know, that was by hanging. And it was from the 1890s on that lynching was usually used to specify the murder of black people by white mobs. And again, we’re talking more than 4,400 of them in the space of less than 75 years. So lynching is an eponym, and it’s a term that’s evolved over time. But in any case, I urge everybody to get to Montgomery if you have the chance, because it’s an extraordinary experience.

Well, thank you for that and the etymology of the word. I knew a little bit of that, but the details are horrifying. Language is lovely, but also unlovely in places.

Yeah, the English language is a record of beauty and cruelty. This show is about all parts of language, the good and the bad. Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or email us, words@waywordradio.org.

Hi there. You have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha. This is Joseph Park from San Diego.

Hello, Joseph. What can we do for you, Joseph?

In high school, I moved to Hawaii, and I was exposed to the local vernacular, Pigeon English. And one day, I was sitting inside of a surf shop, and I heard somebody say to the owner, Bambai, I come back. And I later discovered that the word Bambai means sooner or later. And I thought it was just really, really interesting that they actually have a word that means sooner or later, and that’s how they used it. But I never found out where the origin of that word was.

Did you ever see it written out?

Yes, I actually ended up looking it up to find what the word meant, and it’s spelled B-U-M-B-Y-E. And where did you look it up?

Well, when I moved to Hawaii, someone had given me a little local, I guess their version of a dictionary, it’s kind of called Pigeon to the Max, and it kind of had the Hawaiian pidgining words with kind of the common English translations.

Is that two words, bumbai?

It’s usually written as one word.

One word.

Okay.

And sometimes spelled B-U-M-B-A-I.

You know what it is, though, Joseph? It’s a contraction of by and by.

Huh.

And you should be able to slot by and by in most of the Hawaiian Creole sentences that you read or hear, and it will kind of more or less make sense.

Often it’s translated into regular English, mainstream English, as eventually or when some time has passed.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, so you might say, Bambai we go beach, meaning eventually we’ll go to the beach or sooner or later we’ll go to the beach.

There’s a story called Da Word written in Hawaiian English by Lee Tanuchi, and he’s got this interesting little passage in there where he talks about the kind of variations on Bombay.

And one of the things he says that it kind of is the thing you tell kids, Bombay would be mean never, basically.

You leave them a little bit of hope, but actually you’re not really ever going to come through.

And the other one is because of.

So sometimes it’s a consequence of action.

So something happened, Bombay XYZ happened.

So A happened because Bombay B happened.

Oh, that’s interesting.

Yeah, I never knew that.

So pretty simple.

Yeah, yeah.

I just, like I said, by and by, I’m so much familiar with.

Never made that connection.

Yeah, there you go.

But there it is.

Well, thank you very much.

Joseph, what was that book again?

I think our listeners may want to know.

Yeah, it’s a hilarious read because it’s very tongue-in-cheek, but it’s Pigeon to the Max.

Pigeon to the Max.

All right.

Thank you so much, Joseph.

Call us again sometime, all right?

I will do so.

Thank you very much.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

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

I came across an expression the other day that describes the action of doing something really futile or really foolish, and it’s barking at a knot.

Do you know this one?

No, I don’t. Barking at a knot.

At first, when I read this barking at a knot, which I found in a dictionary of old cowboy slang, I can picture this.

You know, a dog looking at a knot, wanting to untie it, and just barking in utter futility.

Oh, like as a chew toy kind of thing.

Yeah, or just some kind of, like, there’s no way you’re going to untie a knot by barking at it.

But it’s not the rope?

Well, after some…

Because the dog is imagining the knot as like a raccoon gets been treed.

That’s it. But it took me a while to figure that out.

I finally found a letter by James Wyatt Oates from 1914 where he talks about as foolish as a pup barking at a knot hole.

And that’s when I realized that it’s not a tied knot.

It’s a knot in a tree.

Because he thinks there’s something up the tree, but there isn’t.

Or maybe there’s something in the hole.

Yeah, but just standing there barking and barking and barking.

So it’s about futility, doing something.

There’s going to be no result no matter how hard you try.

Yes, it sounds like a video you might watch on YouTube for a while.

You know, this dog just cannot succeed.

Well, it reminds me of the ones that have made the rounds.

There’s a really well-known one of a little kid, maybe two or three, trying to drink from a hose.

And he holds the hose, and every time he bends his head down to drink the water, his hand moves it just out of the way.

And he comes back up, and the hose goes back into place.

And he goes down, and the hose is gone.

And he just can’t coordinate his head and his hand to get that water in his mouth.

So what phrase are we going to take from that?

Well, language is rich and deep and wonderful.

Call us about your parts of it, 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, good morning.

Good morning. Who is this?

Malia.

Malia, and where are you?

I’m in San Diego.

Well, welcome to the show. How can we help?

I have been always curious to know why this blanket is being referred to Afghan.

I come from Afghanistan, and when I was a student in the 60s, and then I returned back in the 80s, and always this blanket is being referred to as Afghan blanket.

And I want to know why it’s being labeled Afghan.

What is the source of this labeling?

So you’re talking about this blanket here in the United States that’s made out of yarn that is crocheted with kind of a loose pattern, right, with kind of space between the items.

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah.

And there’s a long tradition in Afghanistan of creating beautiful textiles, right?

Correct.

Like rugs.

And they often have those repeated squares or abstract shape, things like that.

And as far as we know, from the mid-19th century on, people have referred to these crocheted blankets as the same thing, apparently inspired by that same kind of rich textile tradition.

So it’s more about the pattern than it is about the way that the blanket is made, right?

Oh, definitely. Yeah, yeah.

It’s about borrowing that motif, that repeated geometric motif.

Right.

Yes, yes.

Well, Malia, thank you so much for your call. We really appreciate it.

Thank you. I appreciate for the explanation.

All right. Take care. Bye-bye.

Okay. Thank you. Bye-bye.

I can’t help but thinking about China, how we call this thing that many of us have in our homes by the name of a country, right?

The China that you might eat off of or eat your soup out of, right?

Yeah, there you go. Yes, something kind of exotic.

And, of course, there’s tons of food items like this where we’ve just borrowed a country.

French fries aren’t French, as we all kind of know at this point.

877-929-9673.

So if somebody’s really garrulous, you might describe them as talkative, right?

What if the person likes to travel all over the place by foot?

How would you describe them?

They like to go walkabout?

I don’t know. Is there a word for it?

There is. Like talkative, it’s walkative.

Oh, ha, ha, ha. Of course.

Seriously, seriously. It’s a somewhat rare word, but there’s citations for it going back to 1764.

So walkative. I tend to be walkative myself.

It’s one of the things I dislike about car culture is that I’m forced to drive when I’d rather walk.

Right, right. So walkative means inclined to walk, characterized by walking.

There’s actually a walkative society in London.

That’s cool. Walkative.

Share the words you found in your reading, 877-929-9673.

Or send your language questions about any part of language to words at wewordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi.

Yeah, my name’s Kieran Byrne, and I’m calling from Huntsville, Alabama.

How can we help you today?

So, I was playing a doubles match a couple weeks ago, and we went out on Saturday morning, and me and my doubles partner got creamed.

His name’s One Shack.

So we’re walking off the court, and I said to him, because he played terrible, man, you really laid an egg.

And he said, what does that mean?

And I said, well, it means you were terrible.

And he said, yeah, but, you know, where did that come from?

So I’m kind of calling on behalf of One Shack and asking, where did that come from?

So doubles tennis and a guy named One Shack.

So you told him that he really laid an egg when he performed poorly at tennis.

I did.

And did he achieve any score at all, or was it big fat zeros everywhere?

Well, he’s usually a really good player.

I suspect the real reason he played so poorly on that day was he was a little bit hungover from Friday night.

All right, there’s a long history of some kind of egg being used to mean no score or poor performance in sports.

And actually, the earliest use that I know of goes back to cricket in the 1860s.

And they called it a duck’s egg.

Because you might put these big, nice, oval O’s up on the scoreboard that kind of were the shape and size of a duck’s egg.

Over time, in the United States, it turned into a goose egg, but still meaning the same thing as zero.

And somewhere along the way, there was a new tangent where we just talked about laying an egg.

You know, extending the metaphor a little bit.

We talked about laying an egg.

And the understanding was the egg wasn’t just an egg, but it was a rotten egg.

And so it transformed into not just no performance, but bad performance.

I like that better.

So your bad performance was not only to lay an egg, which is unnatural for a human, but you laid a rotten egg.

And we all know those stink and they admit sulfur smells and so forth.

That’s exactly what I was trying to convey to him.

Gotcha. Very, very good. All right.

Well, I’m glad to hear that.

But, yeah, it’s really common.

Even now you will hear sports announcers in pretty much every sport that I’ve ever watched talking about posted an egg or scored an egg or had an egg in the result or something like that.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

I will relay that to One Shack or Shack Juan.

Okay.

All right.

We’ll give our best to One Shack, will you?

Thanks a lot.

All right.

Take care.

Joe, thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

I guess we should head off at the pass, the bogus etymology about the word love in tennis.

Right. Yes. It’s not from the French leuf, meaning egg, right?

Correct. Yeah, as far as we know.

We’re not really sure where it comes from, but it doesn’t seem likely.

Right. No language authority that I know and respect gives credence to the French origin for love, meaning zero in tennis.

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

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Okay, this is Joe Dooley.

I’m on the outskirts of Huntsville, Alabama.

What can we do for you today?

I have a question about a terminology that I have heard quite often from one individual.

He never says help.

He always says hope.

Somewhat confusing.

He will say, I’m going down to hope someone was changing their tire.

I’m going to hope them do this.

And he’s meaning help.

Just wondered where this came from.

That’s a fantastic question.

Is he also from Alabama?

Yes, he is.

Okay, good.

And about what age group would you say he is?

In his 90s.

Oh, his 90s.

Okay, good.

There is a strong history in the American South, particularly in the Gulf states, of saying hope instead of help.

So it sounds like H-O-P-E, but they’re really saying H-E-L-P.

And the explanation is a little complicated, but I’ll do my best.

One of the things that happens in part of the American South is people drop their L’s in that word.

So it sounds more like hep instead of help.

The other thing that can happen is once that L has started to disappear or has disappeared completely, the middle vowel starts to change.

That E starts to sound a little more like an O.

And so then it sounds like hope.

And it has happened consistently across large populations over more than a century.

So it’s been chronicled by people who study language and put in dialect dictionaries and talked about in various linguistics texts and so forth.

So it’s a well-known feature for a fairly large number of people in the American South.

Well, that’s very interesting.

I don’t think this gentleman ever got to the Gulf Coast to spend any time there other than short vacations.

But he’s from the southern end of the Appalachian Mountains.

That sounds about right.

You’ll also sometimes hear, kind of even more confusingly, people who are saying the word helped, the past tense of help or to help, they’ll also say that as hope.

And it’s a similar thing happening.

But what’s happening first is that D at the end of H-E-L-P-E-D, that D starts to turn into a T and then it disappears.

And then those other same changes take place with the L in the middle vowel.

So it’s a long process over a long period of time, and these kinds of things spread because we tend to talk like our neighbors.

We talk like the people that we live near and work with or related to, that we respect people like our parents or school teachers or bosses or good friends, that sort of thing.

Well, I’ve never noticed any other word that I considered him mispronouncing.

Well, just know that he is a part of a long tradition of folks who say that word that way, and it can be explained, and he’s not alone.

Okay. I certainly appreciate your explanation. Very interesting.

Thank you very much for your call. We appreciate your time.

Glad to help.

Yes, thank you very much.

Take care.

All righty. Bye-bye, Joe.

Bye.

Bye.

877-929-9673.

Want more A Way with Words? Listen to years of past episodes at waywordradio.org or find the show in any podcast app or on iTunes.

Our toll-free line is always open, so leave us a message at 877-929-9673 and we’ll take a listen.

We’d love to get your messages at words@waywordradio.org or hit us up on Twitter @wayword and look for us on Facebook.

This program would not be possible without you.

Grant and I are out to change the way we listen and think about language, and you’re making it happen.

Thanks also to senior producer Stefanie Levine, director and editor Tim Felten, director Colin Tedeschi, and production assistant Emma Kelman in San Diego.

In New York, we thank quiz guide John Chaneski and that master of keeping it real, Paul Ruist at Argo Studios.

A Way with Words is an independent production of Wayword, Inc.

From the Recording Arts Center at Studio West in San Diego, I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

So long.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.