Clever Clogs (episode #1539)

You’re listening to A Way with Words, this show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Ephemeral Creek.

Ribbonfall.

Hourglass Valley.

Gallery Forest.

You won’t see these terms in most dictionaries, but they’ve been used for years in various locales to describe the things that people see in and on the land.

And they’re part of a vocabulary that most of us rarely, if ever, encounter.

A vocabulary of place. Like take the term gallery forest, for example. It’s a forest that grows along the banks of a river in open prairie country. Sometimes their canopies on either side grow close enough together to form a tunnel-like corridor over the water, and the term gallery forest is adapted from the Spanish galleria, or overhanging balcony.

There are more than 800 of these terms in a remarkable book that came out a few years ago. It’s called Home Ground, Language for an American Landscape.

And the editors, Barry Lopez and Deborah Gwartney, approached the challenge of compiling these terms in a really interesting way. They asked 45 well-known writers, people like John Krakauer and Terry Tempest Williams and Luis Urea and Barbara Kingsolver, to research these words in the standard specialized reference works, and then write brief entries about them, explaining what the terms mean in the parts of the continent where you’re likely to encounter them.

And Grant, the book is really a kind of tonic for the mind. It’s this new lens for looking at the environment. And it forces you to ponder, what do we lose if we don’t have the terms to talk about the features of a landscape or the environment? What happens if we had those words once, but increasingly they’re forgotten.

I agree. Yes, I’ve browsed this book and I find it beautiful and evocative. It’s a book that I think you want when you’re lonely even. I think you can page through this book and find a connection to other people. Somebody, a writer, took some time to bear a little bit of their soul to talk about a word.

It’s not clinical. There’s emotion, there’s heart, there’s history, there’s memory as they’re talking about this word and the place in the environment and the place in their memory and the place in the things that they’ve done with themselves and their interplay with the world.

Yeah. And it interests me that there are terms that people use in particular parts of the country that aren’t really recorded in standard dictionaries, but they’re familiar to the people who live there.

That’s true. What were some of the other ones that you listed?

Ribbonfall.

Oh, a ribbonfall. What is that?

That’s just a waterfall that’s very, very narrow. Very clearly defined, right?

Yeah. Not a lot of spray.

Yeah.

And Hourglass Valley is, as you might imagine, a valley that when you view it from above is shaped like an hourglass.

That’s fantastic.

I’m going to share some more later in the show.

And the book again?

The book again is Homeground, Language for an American Landscape.

Thank you, Martha.

We’d love to hear your favorite terms for features of the landscape, the world around us, nature, the earth below us and the sky above us.

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Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Victoria calling from Madison, Wisconsin.

I’m curious about the origins of the phrase, it’s a thing.

Like, when did saying it’s a thing to someone become a thing?

-huh. Now, in what context would you say to somebody, it’s a thing?

Usually if you’re talking about a new topic or something that someone else is skeptical about, you could respond, like, truly, it’s a thing.

And I’ve heard you and Grant talk about it on the show or use the phrase before.

Yeah.

Yeah, so it’s kind of a validating thing.

Like, what I’m talking about is really a phenomenon or something in existence, right?

Well, how well do you know you’re Jane Austen?

Not very well.

Well, if you had read Pride and Prejudice recently, you would find It’s a Thing in there from 1813.

Oh, the phrase?

Yeah, absolutely.

That’s really cool.

The earliest citation that I know of is from Pride and Prejudice.

And what year is that?

1813, so that’s 200 plus years.

Okay.

Yeah, so it’s got some life to it.

It’s got some legs, as they say in Hollywood.

So it’s been around for a while.

And is it just recently becoming more prevalent?

No, no, it’s been around for, it’s got a steady drumbeat of usage on and on and on through 1800s and 1900s and through today.

Yeah, no more particularly common than it was then.

Okay, that’s really interesting.

I would call this the kind of colloquial usage that almost escapes notice until you think really hard about it and you’re like, why did we do that?

Yes, exactly.

And then you have to call a radio show.

And then you start hearing it everywhere, right?

Yes.

But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been around before that.

Yeah.

I’ll have to read the Pride and Prejudice.

I’m going to find that.

I recommend it.

I recommend it.

Well, thank you so much for calling.

Yeah.

Thank you for having me.

All right.

Thanks, Victoria.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye.

It’s a thing.

Thing is one of those multi-use words where it’s a stand-in, almost pronoun-like, for other objects.

And I hesitate to say this because it’s just the nerdiest thing to say.

Oh, go ahead.

If you have access to the Oxford English Dictionary, look at the entry for thing and you will see some really interesting uses of thing that you might not have noticed in your own English, but they’re real and useful.

The thing is.

That’s another one.

Right.

The thing is.

Right.

It’s the thing that we say.

Right.

And the other one that cracks me up is my thing is.

Yeah, my thing.

Yeah.

What is that?

Here’s the thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Or the thing of it.

The thing of it is.

The thing of it is.

Yeah.

And it’s all related.

But there’s sense differences. There’s subtle differences.

Yeah. Call us with your language question. 877-929-9673.

Hello. Welcome to A Way with Words.

Hi. This is Annie Kreisberg, and I live in Bend, Oregon.

Hi, Annie. Welcome to the show.

What can we do for you, Annie?

Hi. Thank you.

A number of years ago, I had the great fortune of living on a narrowboat in England.

And while I lived there, I picked up all kinds of amazing English slang

And had just a great time learning the language, which was a surprise to me because I was moving

From Texas there and I thought I spoke English, but I didn’t. And one of the things that confounded

Me was that the English had two phrases that both had the word clogs in them. So one of them was

Clever clogs, which people would say to you, and it’s kind of equivalent to smarty pants,

Except they would say it in a praising way as normally when we say smarty pants here,

It’s kind of disparaging. And then the other was they would say, oh, he or she popped their clogs,

Which was a euphemism for dying, like kicking the bucket. And by clogs, you mean the shoes?

Well, that’s what I’m assuming. That’s what they meant. And also, since I lived on the waterways,

There were narrowboats and there were also Dutch barges. And I kind of associated clogs with the

Dutch. And I wondered, you know, if there was any any crossover from the boating culture or whatever.

Yeah, we can dispatch the clever clogs pretty quickly because there’s an older version of clever clogs, which is clever boots.

And it’s sort of the same idea, as you said, that it’s like smarty pants, you know.

Right.

Clever britches is another version of that.

Those were around in the mid-19th century, and it was later that clever clogs came along.

And it has that nice alliteration to it, doesn’t it?

Oh, clever clogs.

Right. Yeah. Clever britches is funny because britches is a funny word, but it’s kind of hard to say.

Yeah. And I’m interested that for you, clever clogs is completely positive.

Yeah. When they called me clever clogs, it never made me feel bad.

Okay.

That’s interesting because…

I wonder if you were picking everything up.

It wasn’t like being called smarty pants on the playground.

It was like, oh, Annie, you’re such a clever clogs.

It was said affectionately to me when I heard it, so I just assumed that maybe it was always used that way.

I could be wrong.

Oh, that’s so funny because I’ve seen it used as a slightly derogatory description, you know, for somebody who’s a little too clever for their own good, clever clogs.

Maybe I’m not that clever.

Maybe I was only mildly clever.

And popping your clogs as a euphemism for dying is a little more murky, isn’t it, Grant?

Yeah.

I always think of The Wizard of Oz, actually.

Really?

I think of that moment where the house falls on the Wicked Witch of the East and her shoes come off.

But they’re not clogs, of course.

They’re the ruby slippers, and that sets the whole movie into motion.

Yeah, so the pop there is just about, well, Tony Thorne, the slang lexicographer,

He has a theory that the pop is a different pop, that it’s related.

It’s the pawn, as in to pawn your belongings, to sell them for money.

And the idea is if you pop your clogs, you’re dead and you no longer need your footwear.

And so now it’s being sold for money.

So if you pop your clogs, your stuff is just being sold down the street for a bit of cash.

Yeah, there are lots of euphemisms like that for when we die.

One of my favorites is he hung up his spoon.

You know, he doesn’t need his spoon anymore.

And people used to hang their spoons on the wall.

And it could be that getting rid of one’s clogs because you don’t need them anymore.

Is how they meant pop your clogs.

It’s not that old.

The pop your clogs dates to around the 1940s,

Maybe a little bit older than that.

Yeah.

And I kind of think of kicking them.

It certainly cracked me up when I heard it.

I was like, clog?

Like, why do you guys keep talking about clogs?

You know, it was just so strange.

The larger question we have to talk about here, Annie and Martha,

Is are we actually talking about the Dutch clog?

Yes, exactly.

And I’m not sure that we are.

I’m not sure that we are either.

No, we might be talking about the English clog,

Which is sometimes a different kind of shoe.

So the English were known for wearing a shoe called a clog,

Which could be a completely wooden shoe,

But it might also just be a regular shoe sold with wood,

Which is something that you might do seasonally.

You might do in the winter, particularly in the north of England or in Scotland,

You might at the right time of year get wooden sold shoes

In order to give you more traction or to provide more insulation from the snow and the ice.

Is it more associated with rustic folk?

Yes, definitely.

And also, yes, that’s the thing with the clogs.

To talk about clogs in a lot of different expressions is to refer to somebody as being a bit of a hillbilly,

If we might say in the United States, definitely rustic, a rube.

Oh, no. Now I’m rethinking getting called a clutter clog because I was such a rube.

I didn’t realize that they were making fun of me.

Well, it sounds like you made a good impression over there, ultimately.

You had a great time, right?

Oh, I had a great time.

And in fact, I started thinking about this because I just went back to visit people that I hadn’t seen for 16 years.

All my friends from the boatyard that I lived on.

And they’ve all come off the water now.

And they live all across the country.

So I actually did a road trip with my sweetheart from London to Wales and up to Edinburgh.

And walked along the way and saw people.

That sounds lovely.

It was fabulous.

That does sound glorious.

Annie, thank you for sharing your memories and your words with us.

Absolutely.

Thank you so much.

This was so much fun.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

All right. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

You know, when you travel, you come across all sorts of language in English and varieties of English and in other countries and other languages.

You know, this is a fun place to talk about that.

Share it with us.

Tell us your story.

Where did you go?

What did you learn?

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

This show is about language examined through family, history, and culture.

Stay with us.

Thank you.

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 on the line from New York is our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Hi, John.

Hey, Martha.

Hi, Grant.

Are you guys well today?

Yeah, you?

Yeah.

Good.

All set.

Yeah, I’ve got a nice little quiz for you.

I think you’ll like it.

This quiz is based on a little bit of language history.

Now, the story goes that Noah Webster, in an attempt to wrest control of the English language from the British ruling class,

Wrote three books about grammar, reading, and spelling.

Now, it’s because of him that the word honor in America, H-O-N-O-U-R, is spelled in America H-O-N-O-R.

You know that, right?

Yes.

About his book about spelling.

Indeed.

Now, I like to think, though, that he just had a strange vendetta against the letter U.

Now, in my alternate timeline, Webster has gone wild and removed all the U’s from words.

So thanks to him, I no longer live in a building meant for human habitation.

I live in a flexible tube for carrying water.

Where did I live?

In a house.

Where do I live now?

A hoose.

In a hose.

A hose.

Now we’re taking out the U.

Oh, dear.

All right?

Okay.

Got it?

Yep.

Here we go.

Now, I’ll describe this.

I’ll call it Webster World.

I’ll describe this Webster World situation.

You tell me both halves of the answer, and I’ll lead you to it.

Here we go.

In Webster World, overthrowing a government doesn’t take a sudden violent seizure,

But instead a single police officer can do it alone.

It used to take a…

Coup.

Coup, and now all you need is a…

Cop.

A cop, yeah, just call a police officer and you got it.

In Webster World, it does no good to fish for a creature in the salmon family.

Instead, we take the horse out for a slightly fast run.

We used to catch a…

Trout.

Trout, and now we go for a…

Trot.

Trot, yes, indeed.

Well done.

In Webster World, we no longer march to make people aware of an issue we believe in.

Instead, we’ve all been given a velvet-lined container to hold our valuables.

We used to march for a…

Cause.

Cause, and now we all have a…

Case.

Case. Nice.

In Webster World, you no longer treat a wound by wrapping it in a thin fabric of loosely woven cotton.

Instead, you just stare at it intensely.

You no longer use…

Gauze.

Instead, you use your…

Gaze.

Gaze. Nice.

In Webster World, you no longer express sadness for those who have passed.

Instead, the sun rises.

You were in…

Morning.

Morning, but now it is…

Morning.

Morning. It sounds the same, but it’s two different things.

In Webster World, the currency of the UK is transformed.

You can pay someone with a small body of water, where you would use a…

A pound.

You now use a…

A pond.

A pond, yes, indeed.

Finally, in Webster World, colors are different.

A gray color with a tinge of brown no longer exists,

But there is an abundance of adhesive material.

There is no more taupe.

Taupe.

But there is a lot of tape.

Tape.

Yes, very good.

And since there’s all that tape, I’m going to go do some arts and crafts.

That’s it for me.

Welcome back from Webster World, everybody.

You guys did really, really well.

Thanks, John.

Thanks, John.

We appreciate the push-ups for our brain.

Thank you.

The show’s about language, and as you can hear, we goof off quite a bit.

If you’d like to goof off with us, give us a call.

877-929-9673 or send us your stimulating thoughts on Twitter @wayword.

Hi there. You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi. Who’s this and where are you calling from?

This is Barbara from Norfolk, Virginia.

Welcome, Barbara. What can we do for you?

I was just curious about Southern Draws.

I’m a northerner, and I’m currently living in the South, and I just thought about that.

Well, let’s talk about this, because when we talk about people having a drawl,

It’s one of those imprecise words that is hard to define.

Linguists often make a little collection of words that non-linguists use to describe the language of other people.

The linguist Bill Labov has done this, and some of the words that he’s come up with are do include words like drawl and twang or brogue.

We might say nasal. And they’re imprecise because they mean different things to different speakers.

But for drawl, when we’re talking about Southern American English, we can kind of zero in on what people mean because there’s something that happens that linguists call a vowel glide.

It’s where in dialects of Southern American English, including some of the English spoken in Virginia, they take a single vowel phoneme and they make it into two.

They turn it into a diphthong. So a word like kid, K-I-D, might come out like kid, something like that.

I’m exaggerating for a fact. So it kind of sounds like it’s stretched a little bit.

It sounds a little longer. And if you listen to Southern American English speakers, you’ll hear a lot of this stuff.

And it gives the impression that they’re talking more slowly. And it’s true for those single words.

But interestingly, most of the studies that have been done on the speed of speakers across all American dialects show that people tend to speak on average the same speed.

It’s just for certain words they’re slower. So Southern American English speakers aren’t slower overall.

It’s just for certain words. So it’s that vowel glide for certain words.

It’s just a little elongated into a diphthong. That’s what you’re hearing that sounds like a draw, a kid.

And we don’t know where that comes from. Well, there’s a strange thing that happens that I think I’m the only one that uses this term,

But I call it the vowel rotisserie, where because of different social factors, a vowel might change in the local dialect.

And when one vowel changes, the other vowels in the local dialect kind of bounce around.

So there’s not a lot of collision because we don’t want our A’s to sound like our E’s and our E’s to sound like our I’s.

And so typically when one vowel changes, the others kind of push around over time. It can take some decades to do this.

And so typically a vowel glide might come about because of this vowel rotisserie, this steady shifting of these vowels.

And if there’s enough influence from the people whose vowels are moving, then those vowels move for a lot of people and it’ll become a thing for many people in the region.

But the language is shifting all the time. And whether it shifts in one direction or another is completely up to forces that are beyond any one person’s control.

Absolutely. There’s a little subset of sociolinguistics called perceptual dialectology.

My colleague Dennis Preston does a bunch of this. And what he does is he asks people what they think of the way other people talk.

I highly recommend that you look him up. Again, it’s Dennis Preston, Oklahoma State University, perceptual dialectology.

Just Google some combination of those words and you will find them. They’re very readable.

He’s got these maps where people have circled things and talked about how people think they talk in New York and Texas or Michigan and wherever.

And it’s really interesting to see that people sometimes judge their own speech very harshly or the speech of their neighbors.

And often people judge the speech of other regions based only on what they’ve seen on TV and movies.

And so it’s really revealing about our biases and how little we truly know about language and how poorly we’re equipped to talk about the language of other people.

Yeah, his work is really interesting and really accessible. I think so, too.

How we talk. Well, I’m glad that you let me know that I’m not weird, because I was thinking.

No, not at all. Who thinks about something like how someone says something, you know, says a word?

Barbara, we do. You’re our people. Well, thank you very much.

All right. You call us again sometime, all right? Thanks for calling.

All right. Take care. Bye-bye. Take care.

Call us with your language question, 877-929-9673, or send it to us in email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org. I was talking earlier about the book Homeground, which is a collection of more than 800 terms involving landscape,

Terms that you won’t see in most dictionaries. And I wanted to read the entry that was written by Barry Lopez, who is one of the editors.

He also won the National Book Award a few years ago for the wonderful nonfiction book Arctic Dreams, which I’m reading now.

I want to read his definition for the term blind creek. He writes, to most eyes, a dry creek is a place where a creek once flowed, and after a rain, will likely flow again.

Such a waterway is an ephemeral creek, technically. But, by another way of seeing, some such creeks never entirely disappear.

A ghost, if you will, holds the creek’s place, moving slowly in darkness below the dry, sun-baked surface.

In the mind of a local resident finally attuned to such things, you’ve come upon the invisible but real when you stand above a blind creek.

Dig and the water will come to light, like the blind floor revealed when the carpenter’s floor is taken up.

Isn’t that gorgeous? A blind creek. Right. Also known as an ephemeral creek. Right.

So what he’s saying is that if you know that a creek wants in there, often the water table is just below the surface.

Exactly. And you can find water there. So a wise person will know that you don’t have to go thirsty.

Yes. Yeah. This is a book that I i would recommend to poets because there’s so many poetic expressions like that.

It is a beautiful book. It’s nice to look at. It’s gorgeous to read.

That’s Home Ground Language for an American Landscape. 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is Mark calling from Indianapolis, Indiana.

Hello, Mark. Welcome to the show. What’s up? Well, hey, I wanted to talk to you guys.

I recently heard a story about the words they and them being added to the Oxford English Dictionary as singular pronouns when referring to people who are gender fluid, etc.

And I heard in the context of the story that the word you was not always used as a singular pronoun, but it was only used as a plural pronoun.

And my question was, what was the singular form of the word you? Yeah, yeah, these pronouns have gone through some evolution over time.

Boy, howdy. Yeah, if you go back to Old English, the language that Beowulf was written in, one person would be Thu.

That would be the equivalent of you. It was Thu. And if you’re addressing more than two people, it would be Ye, and it’s spelled G-E.

And as time went on, we developed Thou and Thee for the singular. Thou being the subject, like how great Thou art, and Thee being the object, like I bid Thee adieu or something like that.

And the plural was Ye and You. And so the ye would function as a subject, like hear ye, hear ye, or seek and ye shall find.

And the you in the plural would be an object form. And in a lot of languages, people show respect by addressing their superiors in the plural.

And we were influenced by the Norman conquest and the fact that French does this. French is one of those languages that uses the second person plural, vous, to show respect.

And you also see a trace of that plural being respectful in the royal we. I was going to ask, yeah, the royal we, was that derived from?

Yeah, it’s the same idea of showing respect to royals. And that’s why the queen might say, we are not amused when she’s just talking about herself.

And then as time went on, thou and thee began replacing that formal plural you. And this polite plural began to be used for more and more people so that by the early 17th century or so,

Thou and thee, as familiar forms of address, had been replaced almost entirely, except in certain dialects of English.

And an interesting side note is the Quakers rebelled against this because they had this sort of egalitarian idea that, you know, everybody should be treated equally and you shouldn’t have superiors.

And so they rebelled against that distinction between formal and informal. And on purpose, they called everybody the and thou.

And that’s why you have pockets of the and thou, particularly in Quaker language. Well, that’s very interesting.

Yeah. Does that make sense? It absolutely does. Yeah. But you’re right.

The evolution of those terms over time is very interesting how that became more familiar, I suppose.

Yeah, yeah. It’s complicated and fascinating, and it’s tended to simplify. In fact, in Old English, there was a dual. There was something that was spelled G-I-T that you would apply to two people. Isn’t that wild? And now that’s dropped out. And so all of that is simplified.

So when people think about pronouns being more complicated now than they were in the past, that’s completely wrong.

Yes, the other way around.

It’s always been a muddle.

All right. Well, I appreciate that. That’s really wonderful information. Thank you so much.

Glad to help.

Thanks for calling, Mark. Take care.

Thank you.

Bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hi there.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Gregory Millar from New York.

Hey, Gregory from New York, New York.

New York, New York.

Yeah.

So nice they named it twice.

Yep.

Welcome to the show.

What can we do for you?

Yeah.

My mother used to use an expression often when I was a kid.

And it’s Willie off the pickle boat, she used to say.

I think it had a lot of different meanings,

But I think one of the meanings was like you looked a little disheveled

Or straighten your tie or comb your hair a little bit better.

But it might have had some other meanings as well,

So I never really knew who Willie was, what a pickle boat was,

What the whole thing meant.

So I thought you might be able to help me out with that.

You looked like Willie off the pickle boat.

Yeah, she would say I look like Lily off the pickle boat.

So how long ago were we talking about here?

So my older siblings probably would have heard this phrase in the 1950s and 60s,

And I heard it more in the late 60s, early 70s.

Okay, yeah, that sounds about right.

Well, Greg, the thing with this expression, it goes back to at least the 1890s,

But the name has changed on it.

You can find Willie is sometimes Annie, sometimes Charlie, sometimes Molly.

The first name that I find is Chauncey.

And I think Willie kind of became the firm popular favorite because there was a song at least as early as 1912 called Willie Off the Pickle Boat.

And I don’t have the lyrics for that.

I think the song fixed that name.

And the song is of no real import.

You can find lyrics and variety of different versions of it out there on YouTube or wherever.

But I think if you look at the Smithsonian Folkways collection, you’ll find a version by Ella Jenkins, which is pretty good.

But I don’t know why Willie was on the pickle boat.

But I do know why it was called the pickle boat.

At least I’m pretty sure.

And I think Martha agrees with me on this one.

When there’s a boat race, particularly a yacht race, the last one in is called the pickle boat.

So it’s the loser in a boat race.

And so it’s kind of this position you don’t want to be in really unglamorous.

You’re the slowpoke.

You’re the slowpoke.

And the joke sometimes is that the reason it’s called the pickle boat is because you stopped.

You’re so slow, you must have stopped to do some fishing and to pickle the fish before coming ashore.

Oh, okay.

So that’s the reason that you lost the race.

So anyway, yeah, so somebody who’s really off the pickleboat is naive or unsophisticated or disheveled or a rube or disreputable.

There’s always something kind of negative and undesirable about them.

Okay.

So you’re saying this was not a compliment?

No.

No.

Not at all.

I’m sure your mother loved you, but not when she said that.

Okay.

Got it.

Got it.

Okay.

Well, I’m glad I’m straight on that.

Yeah.

I was actually thinking, too, that my association with the Willie part was Steamboat Willie, because it was a boat, and Mickey Mouse was on the boat.

So that’s what I always thought.

Yeah, what year was that? Was it the 1920s that that film came out?

In the 20s, yeah, yeah.

But it all makes sense, because her mother, my mother’s mother, and my mother’s father, they were born in the 1890s, and my grandmother went to college during World War I.

So that might have been a song that was popular, like when she was in high school.

So I’m sure that my mother got it from her mother or her father.

So the timing makes sense, too.

Well, there you go.

Yeah, excellent, excellent.

That’s good to know.

Well, we appreciate your calling.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, thanks very much.

I’m glad I got that straight.

Thanks, Greg.

Take care.

Okay, thanks a lot.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

877-929-9673.

Why we say what we say and how we say it.

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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 received a question from San Rittenberg in New York City, and I wanted to share it in its entirety.

He writes,

Our mom was fond of referring to a particularly special day as a borrowed day.

It might have been a day in which she was able to spend time with her children and grandchildren,

Or it might have been a day when the weather was unusually beautiful,

Or really, it might have been any day that seemed to her to be especially memorable for any reason.

The older she got, the more often she would use the expression.

Mom was born in 1927 in the small agricultural town of St. George, South Carolina,

And spoke with a deep southern accent.

At the same time, her family was Eastern European,

And it was not uncommon for her parents and grandparent to speak to her in Yiddish.

I don’t think, though I’m far from sure, that the expression came from either of those sources

Because I don’t remember her using it until the last 20 years or so of her life.

I will say, though, that by the time she did pass away,

The five of us, her children, so closely identified the expression with her

That we put a slightly modified version of it on her gravestone.

Today is a borrowed day may suit many an occasion,

But probably not being laid to eternal rest.

We settled on, every day is a borrowed day,

A turn of phrase that represents one of the best parts of her

And that surely makes her smile.

The thing is that the phrase makes perfect sense if you don’t think about it,

But no sense at all if you try to understand it literally.

I’ve considered the possibility slash probability that it’s related to borrowed time,

Which has similar issues if you try to translate it too literally.

To whom, for heaven’s sake? Am I going to pay that time back, and how?

And Grant, I’m not aware of the expression borrowed day

Being anything other than probably what Sam is supposing.

No, me neither. It’s not an idiom or a phrase that’s got any kind of history as far as I know, right?

Yeah.

That’s very lovely though, right?

Isn’t it?

And he’s right. I love that. He put it so well that so much of what we understand about language can’t be examined too closely because it falls apart.

The other thing that this made me think about, well, it made me think about a couple of things.

Number one, that Sam observed that his mother used it more and more in the last 20 years of her life.

Sure.

And then I was thinking about the challenge of what to put on one’s gravestone.

You know, I was just back in Louisville, Kentucky, and I visited the gravesite of Muhammad Ali,

Who was buried in the same cemetery as my parents.

And I loved what was on his gravestone.

It was simply, service to others is the rent you pay for your room in heaven.

Isn’t that great?

I’m interested to know what people are thinking about in terms of maybe an expression that a parent used,

And you’re thinking about putting it on a gravestone?

Yeah, what’s that last line?

Yeah, how do you memorialize something?

The one in stone.

Right?

How do you memorialize yourself or someone that you love?

Yes.

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Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is John King.

I am calling from rarely sunny but sunny today, Bremerton, Washington.

Well, what’s going on, John?

So I used to be a news anchor in Montana.

And I wasn’t into the sports coverage stuff, but my coworker really was.

And he had this phrase he would always say before a big game, which was Powder River, Letter Buck. And, you know, I guess it was a way to like get everybody amped up. And he would yell that. And I could not understand it for the life of me what it meant. Just sounded like gobbledygook to me. So I’m hoping maybe you could solve the riddle for me. Powder River Letter Buck. Is that let her or letter? It sounded like let her, but I mean, you know, he said it pretty fast. It was a lot of energy behind it. Powder River Letter Buck.

So this is Montana. Set the scene for us. Who is he and where is he? So this guy, he’s still on the radio. His name is Peter Christian on the radio. Every week he hosts Riz Games. He’s a talking head, I guess you could say. Sure. Pretty big name in western Montana. But he worked in radio since radio was a thing, basically, back when it was early days radio. He’s been in the industry for a long time.

So this fellow, he’s announcing the games. He’s hollering this out in the PA system, getting the crowd riled up? I would normally hear him in the studio, in a radio studio. But yeah, it would be that kind of atmosphere, I think, where you would normally say it. But, you know, the technology’s changed a little bit. What did he say when you asked about it? How did he explain it? He said it was something another older radio host used to say. And he gave me some quick explanation, but I don’t really remember what it was. Yeah. I’m not surprised that it was passed from person to person because this is an old one. Jonathan, this has got a story behind it. And I want you to bear with me. I’m going to tell you a tale that I’ve gotten from a dictionary of old Western words collected by Ramon Adams. This is one of my favorite books of Western language because it’s original. A lot of the works, the collected language of cowboys and the West and, you know, cattle and ranchers and that sort of stuff. A lot of them just kind of ripped each other off or they made stuff up. But Ramon Adams, he got it right. It’s original stuff. He was out there. He talked to the people. He got it in print and it’s really good stuff.

So there was a cattle drive in the fall of 1893 on the way to Casper, Wyoming. And one night they camped not far from where Highland, Wyoming now stands. And the cowmen in charge of the drive told everyone that the next day they would water the herd in the Powder River the next morning. So none of the cowboys knew that river, but they were excited. A river crossing was a really big deal because it could mean danger and excitement. If the water was high, you could lose a horse or even your own life and lose some of your cattle. You know, you had to be careful. Danger and excitement. This was a really big deal.

So the next morning, the cowman in charge had them get their swimming horses to cross the river because they were going to cross the river several times before nightfall. Now they had several horses each. That’s what you had. Horses for crossing the river and horses for this and horses for that. That’s how it worked. Horses suited for each kind of duty. And there was among them a cowboy named Missouri Bill Schultz. And he let out a swear because he’d already roped his regular horse, not his swimming horse, and he said, this buckskin couldn’t even wait a river. Come 10 a.m. The next morning, they reached the river, the Powder River, but it was almost dry. There was no water. It stood around a little, barely running from one hole to the other. They didn’t need their swimming horses after all. And when Missouri Bill saw it, he looked at the river very seriously for a moment and looked at it sometime, and then he said, so this is the Powder River. And so they had an easy day of it. The river was no problem. They watered their horses. They did what they needed to do. They got to camp. And then eventually they made their way to where the horses needed, or the cattle needed to be delivered.

And then that night at camp, Missouri Bill told everyone how he had heard of Powder River. And now he had seen Powder River. And he kept referring to Powder River nearly every day until they reached Casper. And every day for 28 days, Missouri Bill Schultz talked about Powder River. And so once the cattle were in, they went to the saloon for a social drink. This is how the story goes, a social drink. And you can imagine what that meant. Missouri Bill said, boys, come and have a drink on me. I’ve crossed the Powder River. They had drinks and more drinks, got plenty social. Before too long, Missouri Bill was like, have a drink on me. I’ve swum the Powder River. And here’s to Powder River, let her buck. And Powder River’s coming up. Yip! And yes, sir, Powder River’s rising. And soon afterward, the yip and a yell, he pulls out a six gun and threw a few shots through the ceiling and yelled, Powder River’s up! Come and have another drink! Bang, bang! So that’s the origin. Missouri Bill crossed the Powder River and wanted everyone to know.

Wow. I don’t know how that… I always wondered how it tied into sporting games like football or basketball because bucking definitely sounds like something you’d see at the rodeo. Yeah, so a river is said to buck when the waves are going and there’s white caps and it’s throwing debris and logs and snares everywhere and you dare not go out in it with your horse or even with your own self because you might get caught and drowned. It’s definitely said to buck. So it sort of sounds like one of those running jokes on a long road trip with your buddies. You know, it just gets sillier and sillier. And then when you get off the road and you’re around other people, it somehow takes on a lot more significance and color. And I love the fact that it is exactly that. It’s a running joke that caught its own life, spread from person to person, and then it lost its origin story. So here we are talking about it more than 100 years later and wondering why people say Powder River Letter Buck. And it was Missouri Bill Sheldon, his story about crossing the mostly dry Powder River. Out of river, letter book.

Hey, John, thanks so much for calling. Thank you. All right. Happy trails. Happy trails to you, too. Well, what’s the phrase that’s rattling around in your head that you’re wondering about? Call us, 877-929-9673, or send it to us in email. The address is words@waywordradio.org. Here’s a term I really like from Home Ground, Language for an American Landscape. It’s a collection of 800 terms that you don’t hear that often or see in standard dictionaries. But they’re terms that people use to describe features of landscape. And it’s open book. Open book. Yeah. This isn’t how you take a test. It’s something else. No, it’s a rock formation that’s got two planes of rock at more than a 90-degree angle. It’s sometimes called a dihedral. And mountain climbers will talk about that. I see. That’s an open book. And if you Google that, open book and rocks or open book and cliffs, you can see they look like open books. Because it’s easy to scale those. Boy, you could go right up those, right? Well, speak for yourself, Grant. I can’t. No. One could. We’re one so skilled and inclined. I don’t know. Maybe. But we would like it because it’s an open book, right? We would be drawn to it. 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is Susan Ginter. I live in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Hello, Susan. Welcome to the show. Hi, Susan. My mother, when she wanted to indicate that she thought someone was not presentable enough to be seen in public, she would say, you look like death warmed over or you look like who did it and ran. That’s pretty evocative. Yeah, and I have never heard you look like who did it and ran from anyone else in my mother’s family. And when I mention it to other people, they don’t seem to have heard of it before.

And I wondered if you might be able to fill me in.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, that one’s been around for a while, at least since the 1940s.

I don’t know. Is it any earlier than that, Grant?

No, I don’t have it any earlier than that.

Yeah. Yeah. It’s who did it and ran or who did it and ran away.

And if you’re telling somebody they look like who did it and ran, you’re telling them that they look terrible or messed up.

It’s almost like a rhetorical question, right? Who messed you up and then ran away?

Who hit you or just ruined your outfit or whatever?

Do you think because it didn’t turn up until the 40s that it might have been something that my mother heard on the radio?

Oh, it sure could have been.

It sure could have been.

And you know what’s interesting about this, and I don’t want to go on too long about this,

But as far as I know, very little work has been done to use the scripts of old radio shows

To see how much of that slang was in those scripts first before it entered mainstream English.

That would be a cool project for a slang lexicographer.

But all of the slang lexicographers would require that those scripts be transcribed professionally

And dated professionally, and that’s a huge amount of time and money.

Sounds like a volunteer project for when I retire.

So do you use this expression yourself now?

I do not, except sometimes to myself when I’m looking in the mirror.

And I think you have got to do something about yourself before you go out in public.

Because you look like who did it and ran.

Thanks for your call.

Really appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

All right, take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

We love digging out these little facts, these little stories, hearing your stories about words and phrases that just occur to you.

Where do they come from? Why do we say them?

877-929-9673 or talk to us on Twitter @wayword.

Another word from that collection of landscape terms called home ground that jumped out at me is the word sugarloaf.

Oh, sugarloaf. We all surely heard of Sugarloaf Mountain.

Well, there are lots of Sugarloaf Mountains, as a matter of fact.

Yeah, my dad was born at the foot of Sugarloaf Mountain in North Carolina, but there are sugarloafs around the country.

And the term sugarloaf goes back to colonial times when people, when they could obtain sugar,

Obtained it in these little mounds that people also thought the mountains looked like.

They’re kind of tapered at the top.

Is this like the way that you can find sugar in Mexican markets sometimes?

Oh, I guess so. Yeah, I hadn’t thought about that.

Interesting.

Yeah, we switched to cubes, but…

Okay, yeah. Interesting.

877-929-9673.

Hi there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Holiday, and I’m calling from right up the street.

I’m calling from Carlsbad, California.

Oh, well, welcome, Holiday.

What can we do for you?

Thank you.

Well, as a kid growing up in the 60s, we used the term bitchin’, and I don’t know where that came from.

And how would you use it?

Would you be talking about somebody who’s complaining?

No, not at all.

It’s about something like something that’s really cool.

-huh.

Yeah, it has nothing to do with dogs or complaining.

No, not at all.

And I just can’t figure out where the route might come from.

It’s got to be like surfers flying or something, but how did they come up with that?

So you sound like you grew up in California.

Yeah, I did.

I’m a local kid.

Local kid.

Carlsbad, good surf town, right?

Right there on the coast, yeah.

And so you’ve hit a couple notes here that are really important.

So California is an important one.

Surfing is another one.

It’s positive is another one.

It’s probably not related to dogs.

And how would you spell it?

B-I-T-C-H-E-N.

Okay, that’s cool.

Because a lot of people do spell it B-I-T-C-H-E-N.

Some people spell it I-N at the end with an apostrophe.

Right.

Because it originally did come from bitching, but we drop off the G because it’s nasalized

And you don’t really hear the G, so blah, blah, blah.

So yeah, dates to around 1957, believe it or not.

It does come from a negative meaning.

There’s kind of an inversion of the negative to the positive.

And we’ve seen this happen before with words like bad over the 80s, where bad started to mean good.

And wicked.

Same thing happened with wicked, the Boston wicked.

Sick and ill.

Sick and ill.

Yeah, exactly.

And so originally when it was negative, when bitching was negative around the 1920s, it was used for emphasis.

A bitchin’ fool or this bitchin’ car.

You just say, just like meaning terrible or awful or just bad.

And then that force stayed behind, the force of your anger, the force of your passion, the force of the emotion.

But the negativity went away.

And what was replaced was the positivity.

So now you could say this bitchin’ car, this bitchin’ Camaro was a well-known song, by the way.

And you meant a good car, a good Camaro, right?

This bitchin’ surfboard meant a great surfboard.

This bitchin’ surf meant a good surf, right?

Mm—

Yeah.

And interestingly enough, you’re going to love this, I think.

The first use that we know of was a Gidget book.

Do you remember Gidget?

Of course.

Oh, my goodness.

Yeah, and the Gidget movies, these were fairly wholesome things, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, so the first, 1957, Gidget was the first use that we know of in print.

And it did definitely have a surfing connection.

Huh.

Well, all right.

Well, thank you.

That is interesting.

I wouldn’t have figured that out.

I was trying to figure out Latin roots and all sorts of stuff like that.

No, no.

Not at all.

Sometimes the simplest answer.

Yeah.

All right.

Yeah.

Cool.

Cool.

Good job.

Yes.

Well, thank you.

I appreciate that.

Sure.

Take care.

Yeah.

Good talking with you.

Bye.

Thank you very much.

Have a good day.

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

Thanks for listening. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Until next time, goodbye.

Bye.

Thank you.