Cherry Bombs (episode #1551)

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. We heard from Jean Gerber in Thetford, Vermont, who wrote to ask about the term cherry bumps. She says it’s what my family and friends called it when we swung hard and high in the swing set and the whole swing set would lift up off the ground in the front and two of its four legs would lift a few inches and then bump back into the ground. And this was in the 1960s in Cleveland. And she says, I have no idea why we called it cherry bumps, but we all knew what it meant.

Oh, yeah. The kind of the backyard rusty swing set, right? That wasn’t really bolted down or wasn’t set in concrete. Yeah. And the ones you always tried to do the loop-de-loop where you went all the way around and never quite made it. Oh, my gosh. That, yeah. Yeah. I had some bruises just a show for that.

So that’s bump B-U-M-P, not B-O-M-B, right?

Right.

But I have seen some people kind of, I’m not 100% sure it’s connected, but connect it to cherry bomb, like the little round red firework that you buy near Independence Day, the one that makes that really satisfying explosion.

Right.

But there are other cherry bumps as well. There’s the seesaw ones. There’s one where you jump off and you let the other person slam to the ground. There’s a seesaw one where you get off and you push your end of the seesaw up and down or the teeter-totter. So the other person is kind of flying up and down with her arms failing like a marionette. And then there’s a tire swing one where when you swing out over the lake or the river on a tire swing or a rope swing, it catches a knot or a branch and you’re kind of suspended there momentarily. And that’s the cherry bump.

And you’re kind of, you’re just kind of hanging there for just a second suspended. You don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s kind of freaky. So that’s a cherry bomb too. Yeah. So all these different cherry bombs. So I guess the cherry bump in general is just like this, this moment of panic, like what’s going to happen to me? Yeah. That sensation where your stomach sort of goes up into your throat. Right. Right. Yeah. It’s almost the same feeling as when you tilt back your chair too far and you think you’re going to fall. Yeah. Yeah. That moment. The cherry bump. Well, I’m betting that other people had terms for that.

Sure. Let’s talk about swing set language or playground language. Give us a call, 877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org, or let’s start a conversation on Twitter @wayword.

Hi there. You have A Way with Words.

Hi. My name is Kathy Camby, and I’m calling from Jacksonville, North Carolina.

Hey, Kathy. Welcome to the show. What can we do for you?

Well, I have had a question in my head for years, being a mom and a grandmom. When I would tell little ones, you know, go outside and play, I don’t know, it occurs to me years ago, I thought, why isn’t there a word in the English language that better depicts out of doors besides a word that describes it in relation to a man-made structure?

In other words, we tell children to go into the yard or go outside or come inside. I can’t think of another word that is more resonant with the natural world. Obviously, we can say go out to nature, but that’s kind of weird, nonspecific. They can’t go out in the wilderness. You know, I’m at a loss. Can you help me out?

Yeah, that’s a good question. So do you feel like the problem is it’s inverted because it treats the human dwelling as like the base or the standard and not nature as the base and the standard?

That’s right.

Yeah. The larger world is the more important thing, right? Nature is the fundamental part of what we’re all about, right?

Correct. It seems like it deserves a better word, at least in the English language. I don’t know if other languages have that. So outdoors just refers to a structure that we built. And outside is the same thing. We’re just meaning outside of the structures that we’ve made.

What an interesting question. I’m reminded of years and years and years ago, I was in a band that played a lot of music festivals around the South. And they always made a big deal during these festivals of being on the land. You know, we’re on the land and, you know, be respectful of everything. And I just remember somebody saying, you know what, even when you go back home, you’re still on the land.

I like that, though. But, yeah, so you are on the land, but put your feet in contact with the land is kind of what you mean, right? To be more intimately involved with nature.

I’m reminded of an old computer industry joke about the big blue room or just the big room. People talk, you know, leaving your little area where you work, right, where you spend all day staring at a screen making computer code. And you talk about going outside as going into the big blue room.

The big blue room.

Yeah, or the big room.

That’s cool.

Yeah. But also I’m thinking more seriously about phrases that we borrowed into English from other languages, like al fresco from the Italian, which means in the fresh air, and en plein air from the French, which means in the open air. But those, you know, they’re a little fancy, maybe, but you might just use in the fresh air or in the open air.

I can remember my mother saying, go get some fresh air, meaning get out of one of my feet, go outside. She didn’t mean, oh, do this for your health. She meant do this for my health.

Totally relate to that.

Oh, you can. That’s a good one. That’s a good one. Fresh air. Or the open air. I think the open air is a way of talking about not shutting out the sky. It’s funny when you read people’s descriptions after they’ve been set free for a while, after being a prisoner or being bedridden from an illness, and when they’ve recovered or they’ve been released and they talk about so often the sky, they so often talk about the stars and the clouds and the sun and the tree line and the horizon. So I really do like that expression translated from the French in the open air, because you are talking about this infinite space above you. That’s part of being out of doors or part of being outside.

Right, and it doesn’t necessarily mean being in the middle of a national park. That could be in your little backyard, but it still is being, you know, under the sky, under the fresh air.

That’s very open air.

Very good, yeah. That’s a good one. I like that a lot. But also a big blue room.

Yeah, me too.

Yeah, big blue room. There you go.

Well, thank you so much.

All right. I’m sure we’ll get a lot of suggestions from listeners, Kathy, and we’ll pass those along when we get them, all right?

I hope so. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time.

Take care.

Thanks, Kathy.

Thank you.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

We know you probably have ideas about this as well. What is the term that you use or phrase that you use to talk about being out in nature, out of doors, that doesn’t have to do with a structure? Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or tell us all about it in email. That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Susan calling from Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Hello, Susan. Welcome to the show.

So I had a question about an expression that my grandmother used to use all the time, and she was from northeastern North Carolina. And she used to tell us that we looked like somebody had licked the red off our candy. And I kind of always envisioned like a peppermint stick and somebody had licked the red off the bottom. But I noticed that if I try to use the expression today, kids don’t get it.

Not at all?

No.

To me, it makes perfect sense. But I grew up hearing it. You’re right that the image here is of a peppermint stick, a red and white one, that somebody licked the red off.

And the way I learned that was from a country song that came along a little bit later than the 1940s.

Did you ever hear of Little Jimmy Dickens?

I did. I know he died recently. I remember them talking about him.

Oh, OK. He’s the guy who became famous for his 1965 hit, May the Bird of Paradise Fly Up Your Nose.

Oh, I’m not familiar with that.

Yeah, that was his really big one. That was the one that topped the country charts.

But the next year, he did a song that used that phrase, who licked the red off your candy.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah.

1966, right?

Yeah, 1966.

And in the song, he’s looking at somebody who’s looking sad, and he says,

You’re standing there with teardrops almost flowing.

You look like a little girl that I once saw who bought a peppermint stick down at the drugstore

And stopped to pet a big old friendly dog.

And you can imagine what happened next.

Oh, that is so interesting.

So the dog licked the red off the candy.

Yeah, that is really neat.

Well, my grandmother was a, you know, a country, well, when they used to call it country western fan.

So that would make sense.

Oh, well, there you go.

Yeah, might be where you got it from.

Yeah.

Yeah, I thought it was something she grew up in North Carolina here in.

Yeah, well, she probably did.

I mean, as I said, it’s been around since the 40s at least.

Yeah.

But it really took off in some sectors in 1966.

Martha, I do find it back as far as 1920.

Oh, no kidding. Okay. So even older.

And before that, I find lots of anecdotes about children licking the red-off candy and then someone else unwittingly eating the remains, which is kind of gross.

But not the expression.

As precious as candy was for families back then, it probably was shared.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, thank you so much.

Well, thank you for bringing that story to us.

Thank you so much.

That was really interesting. I appreciate it.

Have a nice day.

Okay.

Take care, Susan.

Bye-bye.

I did find a couple places where people suggest the variant, you look like someone licked the molasses off your biscuit.

Oh, that’s good, too.

But it’s not that common.

I don’t find it in many places.

You know what I really like about those phrases is, you know, I mean, how can you continue to pout or, you know, be sad if somebody’s giving you some perspective, I think.

Yeah.

They’re giving you a little bit of humor and a little bit of sympathy and a little bit of perspective all at once, right?

Right. Who licked the red off your candy? And that’s a real toe tapper. It’s really worth looking up on YouTube.

Little Jimmy Dickens, 1966.

Little Jimmy Dickens. 877-929-9673.

Grant, what is your understanding of the word pigeon toed?

Somebody’s feet are kind of turned inward from the toes are kind of pointing each other a little bit?

Yes.

Why?

I figured that out only a couple of years ago.

What did you think, that the toes were widely splayed?

Yeah, I thought that it was what I subsequently found out is out-toe walking or duck-footed walking.

Oh, interesting.

But I bring that up because, you know, I think all of us have these things that we only learn later in life.

And I’m not embarrassed to say that for most of my life I thought pigeon-toed.

I just had this picture of pigeons with their toes pointed out.

I don’t understand why it’s called pigeon-toed because they’ve got these toes.

They’re pointed in lots of directions.

I guess.

I don’t know.

I’m going to have to look at pigeons.

But anyway, I’m thinking that other people have those kinds of, you know,

I was today years old when I found out about this word.

But I’m embarrassed to say that I was reading a novel,

And the term pigeon-toed was in there,

And I was reminded that I just learned that a couple of years ago.

It happens.

Readers have this problem all the time.

Because when you’re a kid, you kind of glide over it,

And then you glide over it again.

And then suddenly it’s decades later that you’ve been gliding over it.

Right.

Oh, well.

Tell us if you’ve just kind of learned a little too late something didn’t mean what you thought it meant.

Tell us an email, words@waywordradio.org or on Twitter @wayword.

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.

Hiya, John.

Hi, Martha.

Hi, Grant.

Hey, dude.

What did 2020 bring us?

It brought us something called social distancing.

Many of us were told to stay six feet away from each other.

Now, the answers in this quiz reflect that.

In each of them, the first and last letter are identical, but they’re separated by six other letters.

Okay?

I’ll give the letter and the definition.

You give me the word.

In this example, the first and last letter are A,

And the definition is a statement in which you defend something,

Such as an idea, and the answer is apologia.

We have an eight-letter word with two As,

And they’re six letters apart, okay?

All right.

Here’s the first one.

The letter is B.

The definition is to attack somebody unfairly,

Often verbally, in a deceitful, underhanded manner.

Ooh.

And it starts with a B and ends with a B?

That’s right.

And it’s got six, six away, six between them.

Backstab.

Ooh, good one.

Yes, backstab.

Nice.

Here’s the next.

The letter is C.

The definition is an adjective meaning a wide variety of different things

From the Greek for in respect of and the whole.

A wide variety of different things from Greek.

Catholic.

Yes, Catholic is right.

The letter is D.

The definition is tending to move apart in different directions,

Like two roads in a yellow wood in a famous poem.

It’s not diverged.

It is diverged, yes, as your two Ds separated by six letters.

The letter is E.

The definition is to get the heck out of there,

To leave a building or other structure because it’s not safe.

Evacuate?

Escape?

Evacuate is right.

Nicely done, yes.

The letter is G.

The definition is a portmanteau word for a style of living outdoors.

It’s not exactly roughing it, if you know what I mean.

Glamping.

Glamping is right.

The letter is H.

The definition is a noisy clearing of the throat.

In the 1974 film Blazing Saddles, it’s used to indicate politicians noisily blustering.

Harumph?

Harumph, yes.

Harumph, harumph, harumph.

I didn’t get a harumph out of you.

All right.

Now the letter is L.

The definition is relating to or near the coast.

Literal.

Literal.

Yeah, literal is right.

It sounds like the opposite of figurative, but it’s not.

It’s literal L-I-T-T-O-R-A-L.

Like I said, we’re going to keep six letters between our letters from now on.

That’s how it works.

But you guys did really, really well in this quiz.

Nice job.

Thanks, John.

Thank you.

Really appreciate it.

We’ll talk to you next week.

Thank you, guys.

Talk to you then.

Take care.

All right.

Best of the family.

Bye-bye.

You too.

Well, there’s something happening here every week, and we’d like you to be a part of it.

You can call us, 877-929-9673, or talk to us about language on Twitter @wayword.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is George Devokey from Seattle, Washington.

Hi, George. Welcome to the show.

Well, I’ve been an ornithologist for over half a century, and I noticed in the late 60s for the first time that the term flesh is used to describe a pinkish beige as a field mark on a number of birds.

And I realized when I was wanting to take a mixed race group out that I couldn’t use this term without having it be very race specific.

And as a result, I’m wondering if you could tell me something about how this term got to be incorporated into our language as something that clearly means Caucasian flesh.

So, yeah, yeah.

So you’re talking about bird names that include the term flesh, but it’s referring to sort of a pinkish tone or something?

It’s a pinkish beige.

It’s interesting because I have, it’s like the color of herring gull.

Legs are flesh color, like the bill of an immature reddish egret is thought to be flesh color. And it

Wasn’t until I realized that the flesh-footed shearwater, that there is an actual official name

For a southern hemisphere seabird, the flesh-footed shearwater, that like makes that an official.

Use of the term as opposed to just one that’s being used in field guides and things like that.

My goodness, why haven’t they changed that?

Well, it turns out that I, when I started thinking about this around four to five weeks ago, put a post on a Seabird website, a Seabird listserv, and mentioned the fact that, hey, we should really think about this.

Because at this moment, we should be thinking about how we have taken certain things for granted and that they are racially charged.

And as a result, a petition is being written to change the name to probably pale-footed Shearwater.

So I was heartened by the fact that people embraced this.

And now it looks as if some of the major websites that talk about birds and their markings are going to purge the term flesh and basically replace it with something that’s more appropriate.

Oh, that’s great.

Well, that makes perfect sense.

Who writes the dictionaries? Who decides this stuff?

It was a pretty white group of people who made dictionaries for a long time.

I mean, if you look back at the Century Dictionary published in the late, what, late 1880s,

They described flesh color as the normal color of the skin of a white person,

Pale, carnation, or pinkish, the color of the cheek of a healthy white child.

Yeah, it’s embarrassing.

Yeah, yeah. And I’m glad to hear that the scientific world is starting to catch up to some of the commercial world.

I mean, we have Band-Aids in lots of different tones now.

And Crayola got rid of that flesh crayon, thank goodness.

This seems much needed.

Yeah, the work’s not done yet, though.

There are still plenty of places where skin means white people’s skin, right?

Still lots of color guides and paints and clothes and different kinds of things where flesh and skin just defaults to the color of the Caucasians or white people.

Right. I remember a few years ago when Michelle Obama wore this sort of champagne colored gown and the Associated Press described it as a flesh colored gown.

No. No.

No.

Well, I have to say, when I was a kid, the color flesh confused me because I assumed as a child that it meant the muscles underneath and not the skin above.

So a flesh-colored crayon, to me, was the flesh of an animal, what you might see when you butcher an animal.

So I didn’t understand how that weird peach color was supposed to be flesh.

I thought it should look like red meat, like beef.

Yes.

No, and someone even countered my post about this by saying, oh, it does mean meat-colored.

And I said, people aren’t coloring people’s faces in color books, in the coloring books with a meat color.

That’s right.

George, are you finding resistance to this, or is this pretty much a done deal, switching the name?

There were some people who said, oh, we can’t really change the name because it’s so well established, which is kind of the point.

There was a discussion about whether it was the role of ornithologists to do this or should we focus on ornithology.

And I was pointing out that at a moment like this, if you can find in your daily life somewhere where institutionalized racism seems to have occurred and is being tolerated, that it is well to point it out.

And that’s what my musings that I posted to this website were, just me pointing something out at this moment in time.

And again, I’m heartened by the somewhat trivial thing in terms of the grand scope of what’s going on in the world that this seabird name might be changed.

Let’s keep it going.

I bet there are more animals of all kinds that have the word flesh or other things in it that can be changed.

Let’s do it.

We’re with you 100%.

Yeah, keep it up and drop a line sometime.

Let us know what else is happening in your world.

Sounds super interesting.

Okay, great.

Well, thanks very much.

All right, take care.

Thank you, George.

Bye-bye.

Okay, bye-bye.

Tell us how you’re changing language in your world, 877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

If you need a word for a really hot, sweltering day,

You know, that kind of day that’s muggy and hot outside and your hair is frizzing and all that,

And you’ve run out of words to describe it, you can always describe that weather as swallocking.

S-W-U-L-L-O-C-K-I-N-G.

The verb to swallock is a dialectal term in Eastern England that means to broil with heat.

Is this commonly used or is this a historic term, archaic term?

It’s obsolete.

Obsolete.

But it’s really swallocking outside.

Oh, and it sounds like it because the swallock reminds you of sweating and sweltering.

Yeah, just being hit in the face with a hot, wet sock, a wool sock, right?

A gym sock, a stinky gym sock that’s been there over the weekend.

Oh, I got swallocked.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha. This is Jerry Davis calling from Reno, Nevada.

Hi, Jerry. Welcome.

What can we do for you?

So I have a question for you guys.

I grew up in rural Nevada, and the older members in my family would always say a certain phrase.

If somebody was down in the dumpster upset about something, they would say, don’t get your dobber in the dirt or keep your dobber out of the dirt.

And so I started saying that.

And the first time I said it to my boss in the newsroom a couple of years ago, he was just sort of aghast.

Like, I think he thought it was a euphemism for something less appropriate.

So I’m curious if you guys would know anything about the origins of that phrase.

So say it again.

Keep your dauber out of the dirt or don’t get your dauber in the dirt.

And tell us about dauber. You’d spell that how?

D-A-U-B-E-R.

Oh, OK. So like a paint dauber, maybe.

I was thinking that it had to do with mud daubers or mud wasps.

Wasps that roll their nests.

And so your boss thought it was a part of the male anatomy or the female anatomy or something else?

I think he thought it was a euphemism for the male anatomy.

The male anatomy.

Oh.

Okay.

Right.

So like those, that’s why I was thinking paint dauber, the foam on sticks that you might use to touch up woodwork and moldings when you’re painting a house.

I was thinking of mud dauber, and I think of them as putting their little abdomens in the mud.

Oh, interesting. Okay, gotcha.

Like the little wasp kind of insect.

Yeah, we called them dirt daubers in Missouri when I was growing up.

But yeah, the same thing, these wasps.

So you use this, and everybody in your family knows this?

Yep, everybody in my family.

You’d hear it from the older folks, and then all of us kids, too.

And do they think of it as naughty?

No, absolutely not.

It was just meant to say, hey, don’t be bummed out, don’t pout, that kind of thing.

Yeah.

And you’re Nevada through and through or from elsewhere?

Nope, Nevada.

For sure.

Homegrown.

It’s not that common, Martha, is it?

This has got some history to it.

It’s not that well known, but it will pop up in slang dictionaries and dialect dictionaries here and there.

Usually, though, it’s spelled D-O-B-B-E-R, although you will find it is D-A-U-B-E-R.

Many folks think there’s a connection to fishing bobbers because there is a part of this country that spells it, calls fishing bobbers, you know, the things that hold your hook and bait in place, you know, that’s on the top of the water and shows you when you have a fish strike.

Some people do call those daubers because that’s what they’re called in Dutch.

The idea is that if your dauber is down and the fish isn’t on the line, then it means you’re probably tangled in a snag.

Although that kind of seems like a weak definition to me.

And the mud dauber and dirt dauber, I don’t know what the connection would be there.

But the real origin is probably an English dialect word for lump, L-U-M-P, which was also used for anything extraordinary in size.

Specifically, a dauber used in the game of marbles, which was much larger than other marbles.

Some descriptions have it as the size of a limit.

So think of your ordinary marble and then think of this dauber that you would play with.

Maybe after school in the gutter alongside the street,

You would try to knock your friend’s marbles out of the gutter with this huge other marble made of clay dauber.

And this is as far back as the 1860s.

So I don’t understand exactly why that’s a negative.

It sounds like a positive because when you knock those marbles out, you get to keep them usually in the game of marbles.

But anyway, it probably goes back to this idea of having this extraordinarily large dauber, which is a good and great thing.

Not naughty at all, then.

Not naughty at all.

So there’s a kind of inversion there.

And somewhere along the way, by the early 1900s, it came to mean kind of this upbeat spirit and enthusiasm.

Usually the expression is something like, don’t get your dauber down or her dauber perked up again or things like that.

So it’s about good mood or spirits.

That is fascinating.

Grant, Martha, thank you guys so much.

I’ve actually been curious about that ever since the incident at work that I had to explain my way out of.

And I, of course, told him that it was the mud wasp.

Yeah, so have HR call us and we’ll get you off the hook.

Yeah, cool.

Jerry, thanks for calling.

Take care now.

You too. Bye-bye.

All right, bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, you know, there’s something you said at work that you almost got into trouble for and you’re still sorting it out.

I bet you that Martha and I can figure that out for you.

877-929-9673.

words@waywordradio.org.

Or tell the sordid tale on Twitter @wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Yes, this is Stephen from the Wilmington, North Carolina area.

Hi, Stephen. Welcome to the show.

I’m curious about two phrases.

One of them is called a hankering.

A hankering.

It’s like, you know, if someone has a hankering, it means they really desire something to eat, to my knowledge.

And then the other is, I love to cook, and I picked up a bag of cornmeal, and when I got home, I looked at it, it was unbolted.

Unbolted.

And I thought, well, I’ve never seen that before, and I have no idea what it was like.

So you had a hankering for some cornbread, and you came across two words, and you had to call us and figure it out.

You said, I’m going to stop everything and call Martha and Grant.

Is that right?

Is that how it happened?

Yes, ma’am.

Okay.

Well, let me tell you about unbolted cornmeal.

That’s the one that I prefer because it’s unsifted.

It’s going to have more of a gritty texture.

It’s sometimes called old-fashioned cornmeal.

And the cool thing about the term unbolted is that it has to do with a word spelled B-O-L-T, like bolt, or you can spell it B-O-U-L-T.

And that’s an old word for sift.

And you would sift meal through a sieve or a fine cloth, and the cloth was called bolting cloth.

And what’s super cool about this term, Stephen, is that it goes back hundreds of years.

In fact, Shakespeare used it several ways.

No kidding.

Yeah, yeah. There’s a character who talks about someone being ill-schooled in bolted language, meaning that their language is not refined.

I’ve done a lot of traveling and research and et cetera.

And most of it has been in the South from here down to Houston, Texas and Louisiana and et cetera.

But that’s always where I found the term hankering.

It’s actually a much older term than that.

Again, it’s another term that goes back hundreds of years to at least the 17th century.

And it’s related to the term hang, meaning to hang around for a long time.

You’re kind of loitering and hoping for this thing to come along that you want.

Like a child hanging around outside a candy store looking in the window, hankering for some goodies.

Yeah.

I understand that now.

But a hankering is like, but it’s got to be pretty much a southern thing.

No, not really.

It’s widespread.

You know, I don’t know that there’s a regional component to that, Martha.

Is there?

You know, I know what you’re talking about, Stephen, because I feel like.

It’s got a flavor.

Yeah, it’s got a flavor to it.

I’ve got a hankering for this.

Especially with the G off, right?

Hankering, yeah.

I would love to do a survey and map that, Martha, because you know what, Stephen, you might be right.

That might be more southern.

There might be a regional component, but I don’t know of any work that’s been done on it.

And I think people are always surprised to find that it’s been around since the early 1600s.

Yeah, 400 years of that.

Dutch has some words with similar meaning, right?

So there’s a good connection there.

Yeah.

Stephen, thanks for calling us.

We really appreciate it.

Y’all have a good day.

Thank you.

You too.

Thanks.

Well, food and language, that’s our sweet spot.

And we like it when you call us about food and language.

Martha and I kind of fight over these calls.

So if you want to see us battle fist to fist, call us with your food and language questions, 877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org or talk to us about food and language on Twitter @wayword.

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.

In 1991, Kentucky poet Frank X. Walker looked up the word Appalachian in a dictionary,

And he was dismayed to see it referring to white residents from the mountains of Appalachia.

Walker is African American, and he was, of course, so bothered by this erasure of his own identity

And that of other African Americans in eastern Kentucky

That he started using his own word to describe people of African descent

Who live in Appalachia, and that word is Afrolatchian.

He would eventually become Kentucky’s poet laureate,

And he also started a group known as the Afrolatchian Poets,

Which includes such writers as Nicky Finney and Kelly Norman Ellis.

And the word Afrolatchia became used so much

That it’s now in the New Oxford American Dictionary

Where it’s defined as an African-American who is native to or resides in Appalachia.

And one of those Afro-Latchian poets, Crystal Wilkinson, is the author of a lovely novel that I just finished.

It’s called The Birds of Opulence, which is a gorgeous title,

Opulence being the name of a fictional Kentucky township.

The book is about the lives of black residents in this township.

And this book is a quiet, lyrical novel about the relationships between family members and the relationship between people in the land and nature.

It’s about things said and unsaid in family and secrets and the way that friendships change over time, just the way that we’re all trying to get through life doing the best we can.

And you can tell that it’s written by a poet because there are all these poetic phrases, like she talks about the grand whisper of daffodils in the spring.

Or she starts out a chapter with, it is late October and the hills have colored up like beets and corn.

It’s a quiet novel. It sticks with you. I just keep going back there. It’s called The Birds of Opulence by Crystal Wilkinson.

Oh, that’s so lovely. And you’ve said something about that that reminds me of the book that I’m recommending.

And this is Joan Didion’s collection of stories slouching towards Bethlehem.

Oh, yeah.

First published in 1968, and it still remains fresh.

It’s a snapshot of an era, but it’s precisely relevant nationally and personally to me now,

And still vividly sharp.

For example, there’s an essay on John Wayne that is dated in a strange way.

I don’t think we revere our movie stars in the way that we once revered John Wayne.

Do we revere anybody that way anymore?

She has an affection for him that has not only part of her childhood awe of him as a movie star,

But also has part of her acquaintanceship with him as an adult,

Where he was a man who could not escape his screen legend.

But for me, the part of the book that I like most is the parts where she talks about California

And also her closing essay on leaving New York for California, because that’s a song that I know.

In the essay, Goodbye to All That, she writes,

I was in a curious position in New York.

It never occurred to me that I was living a real life there.

And then later she realizes that it is distinctly possible to stay too long at the fair.

And it really felt like that in New York.

It really felt like there was this carnival happening around you.

And that there was just another ride just on the next block or one more funnel cake to go get or, you know, one more house of mirrors to try out.

And at some point you just become exhausted and you’ve got to leave the fair.

And so if you’ve forgotten that Joan Didion is a precise, exquisite writer, her work is definitely worth picking up again.

And that’s Joan Didion’s collection of stories, Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

I need to pull that down and read it again.

I remember the precision that you’re talking about.

And what’s remarkable, when you realize that some of her stories were laid down in her early 20s,

so she mastered the craft very early, and there was no rust on her blade up to the very end.

We’d love to hear about what you’ve been reading.

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

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Jill from Indianapolis.

Hey, Jill.

What’s on your mind?

Well, I had a question about a word that I heard.

I believe it was on NPR, that the word hooligan is considered racist.

And so I looked it up, and all I could find was that there’s a connotation with the Irish.

Or with football fans.

And I asked around to some friends and they thought the same, but we didn’t find anything that implied that it maybe had more contemporary racist connotations.

Do you remember the context of the show that you first heard it on?

I don’t remember. I just remember hearing, oh, words that people don’t know that they’re using are racist like hooligan.

And I immediately sort of alarm went off like, oh, no, have I been using that word?

Just because I’d never I’d never associated it with anything derogatory and usually just with sort of like unruly children, maybe.

Oh, yeah. This is a complicated topic. We we often encounter this.

We get sent emails asking us to fact check a list of possibly racist terms.

They come up on our Facebook group. People call us on the phone to ask about this.

We get asked to be interviewed for radio and newspapers about this.

Who again is sometimes on the list.

And the problem with so many of these terms is it’s about context and perspective.

Your definition of racist might not be my definition of racist.

And your sensitivity might be different than my sensitivity.

And your understanding of history might be different than mine.

And you’re willing to accept some historical data might be stricter than mine or broader than mine.

So that all said, we can talk about hooligan, but I want you to keep that all in mind, okay?

So possibly a slur against the Irish.

That’s what we’re investigating here.

Yeah, yeah.

My overall thesis is that it wasn’t originally and that it isn’t now,

But it could have been used in racist ways over the century that it’s been around.

So that’s the important part.

Any word can be turned to malevolent purpose.

As a matter of fact, there’s new information that I uncovered myself,

And none of the reference works I have have this information,

Is that it probably came out of London,

Not the United States as most reference works have it.

In the mid-1890s, there was a hooligan gang operating in South London.

They were called The Hooligan Gang, capital H, capital G.

They had a lot of ruffians.

They were accosting people, stealing money, all the usual crimes.

There were other gangs operating at the same time, the Wyatt Gang, the Girdle Gang, G-I-R-D-L-E.

But the hooligan gang caught on, and they had some success and kept being talked about in the newspapers.

And by 1898, the word hooliganism appeared and was talked about both in the United Kingdom and in the United States.

So this idea of hooliganism and hooligans spread to the new world.

And so by the end of the 1890s, you can find in both the United Kingdom and on the East Coast of the United States,

Much talk of hooligans and hooliganism and what they’re doing.

And it’s in exactly the same language.

Sometimes they talked about hoolies gang in exactly the same language.

And it’s pretty clear that there’s some confusion about whether or not hooligans and hoolies gang are the same thing.

I believe that they’re exactly the same thing, although there’s one story that kept being repeated over and over,

That they were different people and different things.

But the information is muddled, and at 100 years, it’s hard to tell whether or not that’s true.

And Hooligan, by the way, was an incredibly common name.

I mean, so common.

And variations on O Hooligan and Houlihan, they’re all variations on the same name.

So it’s impossible to say who Hooligan was, which person it was named for.

Sometimes people say it was a Patrick Hooligan, but we don’t know.

And there were a lot of Patrick Hooligans.

I mean, Patrick Hooligan was almost like John Smith, incredibly common name.

So we don’t really know.

But in any case, it’s a 100-year-old world where in the beginning it was an actual criminal gang.

So if there was something negative about it, it’s because they were up to criminal deeds.

So if I were to use it to describe a group of kids running around the neighborhood and calling them hooligans, somebody overhearing me wouldn’t necessarily think that I was using a slur unless that group was a particular subset of people who might be perceived as that I was speaking ill of them.

Yeah, maybe. I would say that you can’t count on everyone knowing everything that you know, right?

So if you called a group of Irish American kids hooligans, somebody might take offense.

Right, right.

So your question is, do I stop using the word or not?

Yeah, I think my main concern was that if I had used the word, that I would be perceived by the general public as using a slur, whereas I had never heard that before.

And so I just wanted to make sure that I wasn’t living in a bubble where I was using the word hooligan and everyone else was saying, I can’t believe she just used that word.

No, there’s something called amelioration, and that’s what’s happened to Hooligan.

It is definitely ameliorated where it’s much blander and bleached of a lot of its negative meaning.

It’s very much the kind of word that you might use on kids these days, at least in this country.

It’s a different thing in the United Kingdom, but of course we’re different English speakers.

We have two different Englishes going on.

But it’s not specifically an anti-Irish.

No, it isn’t. Not in this country, it isn’t. Not at all.

Okay. Well, that’s good to know.

Thank you for your thoughtful question. Really appreciate it.

Great. Thank you so much.

All right. Take care.

Take care, Jill.

Bye-bye.

Bye. Take care.

Well, have you been having conversations online with your friends about this or that word?

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

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

The Latin word frivolous means silly, empty, trifling, sorry, worthless, pitiful.

And of course, that gives us the word frivolous in English.

But what I didn’t realize until recently was that there’s also a verb form.

It’s a back formation from frivolous.

And it’s frivol.

F-R-I-V-O-L.

To frivol means to do something unimportant or frivolous or to waste time or squander.

Interesting.

So how would I say that I’m frivoling?

What would be a frivol task?

Exactly.

Well, you’re just maybe you’re doom scrolling on Twitter when you’re waiting in line or something like that.

Right.

What’s today’s worst news?

Let me see if I can beat that other story.

Oh, look, a train crash.

Maybe that’s today’s worst news.

Right.

That’s terrible.

Yeah, or you’re just rearranging things on the table or, you know.

Right.

You’re frivoling.

Your own personal version of the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Something like that.

Yeah, when you’re supposed to be working, but instead you’re reorganizing the pencils in the mug next to your computer.

Yes, yes.

Or just going on Facebook one more time or something like that.

Frivoling.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey there. My name is James Dykstra from Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Hi, James.

How are you?

Doing well. We’re glad to have you. What’s on your mind?

I’m from southwest Michigan, which, as I understand it and experienced it growing up, is a bit of a Dutch Christian Reformed Calvinist enclave.

Could be because I was from a particularly insular Dutch community.

But basically, I didn’t realize until I left Kalamazoo and actually went to the Peace Corps in Mexico from 2013 to 2017 that some of the words I use may have origins in Dutch.

I guess, you know, my great grandparents are the last people to actually speak Dutch in our family.

And so that kind of got lost, which I think is a shame.

But there’s one word in particular that we would use, logi.

So like maybe after a big meal, we might say, I’m feeling really loggy, which I always understood to be like sluggish or lethargic.

But I said that in Mexico with other Peace Corps volunteers, and they were all like, what? What is that? They had no idea what that meant.

So I guess my question is, is that word from Dutch? Are there other parts of the country that use it? Or maybe it’s totally normal, and it was just a fluke that they didn’t understand what I was saying.

Interesting.

Loggy.

So your theory is it’s just because of your Dutch roots that you know the word.

Yeah, and since coming back to Michigan then the last three or so years, I’ve asked other people and find quite a few people who haven’t heard of it.

Obviously, my family, if I check, they’re like, oh, yeah, I know, you know, Logie.

And I think what kind of clued me in was I think I looked it up in a bunch of dictionaries, and one said Dutch origins or like Dutch, yeah, Dutch roots.

Right. Okay, so we can do a little digging on this.

The best work that I know of to look for this sort of thing is the Dictionary of American Regional English, which has an entry for this.

And it does have a map as well and has a note about regional use.

And it says that it is a little more common outside the American South, but it shows that its use doesn’t really match exclusively the traditional Dutch settlement areas.

So based on that, it’s not perfect data, but based on that, I would say that it’s not only used in Dutch settlement areas.

And as a matter of fact, there’s another book that I would recommend to you if you really want to get into the Dutch contributions into English, which has a lot more to say about this word.

And this is called Cookies, Coleslaw, and Stoops, the Influence of Dutch on North American Languages.

It’s by Nicolene Van Der Sys.

I think that’s how you say the last word. It’s S-I-J-S.

Cookies, Coleslaw, and Stoops. It’s a wonderful book.

It’s a very reliable, thoroughly researched compilation of all the contributions of Dutch into French and English in North America.

It’s fantastic and has a really good entry.

And it kind of points out that Logie came into English a couple different ways.

It shows up not only in North American English, but in English dialects in the British Isles.

So it’s possible that it was already in English before English speakers came into the New World, which would explain why it pops up in places where there are no real Dutch settlements.

Interesting.

Yeah.

A little more complicated than I thought then.

Yeah.

So we have it in print from as early as the 1840s.

And one of the clues that she comes across is that it shows up first as the spelling of loggy, L-O-G-G-Y.

This tells us that because of the way that Dutch was spelled at the time, that it came from a Dutch word L-O-G-G-E.

So that places it around the 17th or 18th centuries as when it was first borrowed into English.

And that’s the anglicizing of that word L-G-G-E into L-O-G-G-Y kind of proves that point.

It’s one of the things etymologists and word historians can do kind of to connect two languages when there’s a transfer from language A to language B.

So, no, you probably don’t know it exclusively because of your Dutch heritage, but I would also say there’s a strong chance that it’s reinforced in your vocabulary because of your Dutch heritage.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does.

Very cool.

Yeah, it is cool.

Anyway, I do recommend that book if you want to explore more of your Dutch heritage.

I recommend it to anyone, by the way.

Again, that’s Cookies, Coleslaw, and Stoops by Nicolene Van Der Sys, S-I-J-S.

Well, thank you so much for your help.

Yeah, our pleasure.

Thanks, James.

Thanks for calling.

Absolutely. Have a good day.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

877-929-9673.

We heard from Connie Fitzgerald in San Antonio, Texas, who says a granddaughter when she was three fell on her bottom.

And she was crying so hard that her dad picked her up to distract her.

And he said, oh, my goodness, you fell on your buns.

And she said the next day the little girl was scratching her behind, as kids do, and she stuck her hands in her underwear.

And her dad said, what are you doing there?

And she said, itchy biscuits.

Connie says, I thought that was the cutest thing in the world, so I will forever remember itchy biscuits if my rear itches.

Yeah, three is a wonderful stage for language because the kids are just innovating and they neologize like crazy and come up with all this stuff.

Right.

Yeah.

Call us 877-929-9673.

Thanks to senior producer Stefanie Levine, editor Tim Felten, and production assistant Rachel Elizabeth Weisler.

You can send us messages, subscribe to the podcast and newsletter, and catch up on hundreds of past episodes at waywordradio.org.

Our toll-free line is always open in the U.S. and Canada, 877-929-9673, or email us 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.

Many thanks to Wayword board member and our friend Bruce Rogow for his help and expertise.

Thanks for listening. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. Until next time, goodbye.

Bye-bye.