Colonial English (episode #1515)

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.

Grant, I’m still glowy from our trip to Stumptown, also known as Birvana.

Portland.

Yes, Portland, Oregon, also known as Bridgetown.

Yeah, it was very lovely, wasn’t it?

Rain when I wanted it, sun when I wanted it.

Yeah.

It was very good.

Yeah, and we had a great evening at the Mission Theater, met a lot of our listeners, and that was great.

The other thing that really excited me about the name of Portland is that it’s the only town I know of that I’ve ever been in whose name was decided by a coin toss.

A coin toss.

Yes, in the 1840s.

The place was called The Clearing, and the two founders of the town were Francis Pettigrove and Asa Lovejoy.

Francis was from Portland, Maine, and Asa was from Boston, Massachusetts.

And each of them wanted to name the town after his own hometown.

Yeah.

And so how are you going to choose between the two of them?

They decided to have a coin toss.

Oh, okay.

And Francis from Portland, Maine won the coin toss.

There we go.

So Portland was not called Boston.

It was named Portland.

As far as I know, that’s the only town whose name was decided by a coin toss.

But maybe there are others.

Or maybe you live in a place that has a weird story behind the name of it.

Yeah.

Let us know.

877-929-9673.

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

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Nathan in Virginia Beach.

Hi, Nathan. Welcome to the show.

Hi, Nathan.

I’m in the Navy.

We had a huge argument in class the other day over the word gruntled, if it’s a word.

Because I think we’ve all heard disgruntled before and saying that I’m disgruntled by this or something.

My argument was that gruntled had to be a word because where would a disgruntled, like the opposite of something have come from, if that makes sense.

And you say this was a huge argument?

They were screaming and everything going on.

It was a catastrophe.

Oh my goodness.

My friend said there’s no way the word gruntled is a word. So I was hoping you guys would be able to shed some light on it.

Oh boy. Wow. Well, I think we can probably satisfy both of you all. Technically, if you look in some dictionaries, you will find the word gruntled as you used it, meaning pleased or happy.

But disgruntled is what we call an unpaired word. There are a lot of words in English that look like they should have something that is their direct opposite, like disgruntled versus gruntled.

Well, for example, in your class, it sounds like the discussion got kind of unruly, and then you all became ruly again, right?

Yes, that makes sense.

But you almost never, ever, ever, ever hear the word ruly.

Right, exactly.

Yeah, so unruly is another example of an unpaired word.

So technically, Nathan, if you look in the Oxford English Dictionary, you will find the word gruntled defined as pleased, satisfied, or contented.

But we’ve got a little asterisk here because it’s kind of a jokey word, and it came after, well after, the word disgruntled, meaning unhappy.

Because what’s weird about the word disgruntled is that that dis, that D-I-S prefix, doesn’t function the way you usually see that prefix functioning.

In this case, it’s actually an intensifier.

And so disgruntled means you’re really grunting, you’re really grumbling.

So it doesn’t mean not gruntled.

Yeah, gruntled came later.

Does that make sense?

Yes, absolutely.

Your basic position is correct.

It is a word, but your argument was off.

That’s a good way to put it.

I suppose it would be a strange, it doesn’t exactly sound right to be like, if someone gave me a high five or said something nice about me, I’d be like, oh, I’m very gruntful by this.

Exactly.

It doesn’t exactly make sense.

Exactly.

Well, you’re giving me a lot to think about.

All right.

Well, cool.

You’re good.

You know, I’ve got to say, a room full of people arguing about language, yes, please.

Invite us.

It’s a room we want to be in.

Yes, of course.

Oh, of course.

We’d love to have you.

A bunch of sailors in a room with A Way with Words.

That sounds great.

That does.

Who wins that argument?

The CEO?

Who would?

The top ranked guy in the room is the one that wins, right?

Well, I’m going to stay with me when I tell them I was on this radio show.

We’ll see what they have to say about that.

All right.

Thanks for calling.

That sounds great.

We really appreciate it, Nathan.

Yes.

Thank you so much.

You two have a wonderful day.

All right.

See you.

Bye-bye.

So you were talking about unpaired opposites or also known as orphaned negatives.

And there’s a ton of those.

You mentioned ruly and unruly.

We have disambiguate and ambiguate.

We have…

Camp.

Kempt and unkempt, feckless and feckful.

My favorite, though, is inert and ert.

Yeah.

But you also mentioned that dis is sometimes an intensifier, which throws people.

And there are just a few words in English, and most of them are rare.

The rare ones are dissever and disannul.

But also some people include disrupt and disturb, where you are intensifying the turbulence with disturb.

Of course.

You’re intensifying the eruption with disruption.

Of course.

I never thought about that.

Right?

Interesting, because those prefixes are not all the same necessarily, even though they might look the same and be spelled the same.

Oh, that’s really interesting.

I’m also thinking of, you mentioned inert.

Yeah.

Is that what you said?

And I was thinking of inept, too.

Oh, that’s very ept of you.

Yeah.

And I would be remiss in mentioning, because we will get a lot of emails about it, you must Google the poem A Very Descript Man by J.H. Parker, which is a ton of these and a really funny composition.

Cool.

We should put a link to that on our website.

Absolutely.

If you and your coworkers are arguing over language, call us and talk about it.

877-929-9673.

For our ongoing discussion of town names that look like something different from the way they sound, we heard from Randy Denker, who lives in North Florida.

And Randy said that nearby there are the towns that look like Havana, Florida and Cairo, Georgia, but they’re actually pronounced Hayvana and Cairo.

Randy says, when I first moved here, it made me crazy.

But when in Rome…

Say Rom.

That’s right.

Or Roma.

877-929-9673.

Hi there.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Michelle Lagos-Young from San Diego, California.

Well, I wanted to talk to you guys about a trend that started at my work a little while ago.

Some of my coworkers have started using the word alibi in a way that I hadn’t really heard it used before.

It started with our senior director.

As he’s wrapping up a meeting, he would say, okay, does anyone have an alibi before we close up?

And then someone would reply with, you know, a little topic that they wanted to touch base about before we closed the meeting.

And then shortly after, now everyone else is using the term alibi where as a meeting is wrapping up, someone will say, oh, I have an alibi.

And they’ll bring up a topic that they want to touch base about.

And I’ve heard the word alibi used before, and I know the meaning, but I’ve never heard it used as like a subject changer.

And so I was wondering if you guys had any information on that.

Michelle, a couple of questions. What’s your sense of the word usually?

So I know it as either being in another location or an excuse or a defense.

Right, right. And can I ask generally what kind of work you do?

We work in government defense, so we’re in the strategic communications and strategic development side of government defense.

So A-L-I-B-I, right? It’s exactly the same word otherwise.

And it is important that you work in the defense industry because that is where it comes from.

This is a military term originally.

It’s hard to Google this, but you can find it being discussed in various military forums on the Internet and a few other places.

It’s not well chronicled in any of the slang works that I have, and I have all of them.

Originally, it meant an unspent or unfired round in a gun.

Oh.

And here’s what I’ve learned about this.

So when you have shooting drills or exercises or for some reason you’ve got to go to a range and fire your gun, something like a jam might prevent you from getting off all your rounds, right?

So let’s say that you’ve got to shoot 15 rounds, but you only shoot 14 because it’s a jam. Instead of trying to clear that, you will just wait until the end. And then whoever is leading the exercise, whoever’s in charge of the range will say, do we have any alibis?

And you raise your hand and they’ll come over and talk to you and see if it’s just simply a matter of clearing that round and firing it off or if you just simply are done. And so I think that the reason that they’re using alibi here is it’s like, what is your excuse for not having fired all your rounds? Because you’re required in certain circumstances to have fired all of your rounds. That is why you’re there.

But in any case, yeah, so it’s from firing weapons, and it’s an unspent round. Oh, it’s fascinating. Right? I would not have got that at all. Yeah. That’s awesome. That is really interesting. I’ve never heard that usage before.

Yeah. But it’s kind of like the one that you haven’t shot yet. Yeah, yeah. But, again, there’s that really particular circumstance, Michelle, where you’re required to shoot off all your rounds, but you haven’t. And you have to explain why.

Yeah. And it can kind of go for meetings because is there a round that needs to be shot? Is there something that needs to come up? So it’s not really cool. It’s not just new business, right?

So it’s not just new business. It’s like super important new business that has to be put on the table. Yeah. I love that. Thank you so much. That’s fascinating. It really is.

Glad to help. We’re delighted to get these kinds of calls. And, you know, I bet in your interfacing with the Defense Department and other industries like that, I bet you have a lot of this, and you need to call us with more of it, all right?

Awesome. I definitely will. I’ll keep an ear out for it. Yeah. Thanks for raising the question, Michelle. I learned something. Take care now.

Thanks. You guys, too. All right. Bye-bye. But you’re not going to find this in businesses typically that aren’t military adjacent. Not yet. Not yet.

Right. This could become the thing that in 20 years we’re like, where did this alibi come from? Can’t we just say new business like we always did? Right. Right.

Because my sense of it always has been the same Latin sense. I mean, the word in Latin means elsewhere, someplace else. You know, if you have an alibi, no, officer, I wasn’t there. No, sir, I wasn’t there.

Yeah. Yeah. Here’s where I actually was. I mean, there are taverns called the alibi. That’s right. Yeah. There’s one here in San Diego. There is indeed.

And then there’s the extended use, which some people still grumble about, which just means excuse. So rather than a more legal notion of alibi, it’s just the idea of why didn’t you empty the trash? Well, my alibi is that I couldn’t find my shoes.

Yeah, exactly. 877-929-9673. We were talking earlier about coin tosses and heads or tails. I didn’t realize that an earlier version of heads or tails is cross and pile or cross or pile.

Cross or pile. What’s the explanation for that? In English, on one particular coin, there used to be a cross on one side. And on the other side, the word pile just means the back of a coin.

Oh, interesting. Yeah. So you can play cross or pile. 877-929-9673. Thank you. You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Martha Barnette. And I’m Grant Barrett, and we’re joined by the quiz guy, the quiz guy, John Chaneski. Hi, John. Oh, that quiz guy. Yeah, that’s the one.

I see him in the mirror right there. There he is. It’s me. Hi, Grant. Hi, Martha. How are you guys? Doing well. We’re great.

You’ve come to stump us again? Yes, I have. You know what time it is? It’s time once again for limericks. That’s right. It’s 2019. So we’re going to look back at 2018 at things that happened, and we’re going to use everyone’s favorite poetry style, the limerick, to remember them.

You guys ready for this? Yes. Ready. So we have to complete the limerick, right? That’s right. I’ll give you almost the entire limerick. You give me either one or two words that will rhyme.

Here’s the first one. When somebody says, where’s the beef, say Western Australia, in brief, knickers the steer is so huge, I fear, that his photograph beggars…

Belief. Belief, yes. Now, that was a warm-up. Here’s our next one. Our fans, from Facebook to Reddit, can see where this limerick’s headed. When I say the name Banksy, they all just say, thanks, he sold a painting that was promptly…

Shredded. Shredded, yes. How could we forget? How about this one? Oh, Canada’s gone fully green. Marijuana’s now legal, I mean. How will it go? If there’s one thing I know, they’re going to need much more.

Caffeine. Caffeine is correct. What did you say, Martha? I said caffeine. Caffeine is fine, but yeah, I was looking for poutine, yeah. As Jay Pritchard on Modern Family once said, I’m not poutine it in my mouth.

Oh. Good news for a future Mars squatter or a future Mars whale or sea otter. An ESA probe has found on that globe evidence of underground water.

Water, yes. Nicely done. That Spider-Verse movie cartoon had a pig Spider-Man, but in June, in downtown St. Paul, who was crawling a wall? Just your friendly neighborhood.

Raccoon. Raccoon, yes. Very good. I forgot about that. Thanks for reminding me. That was back in June, yeah. He got, what, it was like 25 stories, 30 stories. I can’t believe it.

In Thailand, they had a close shave, but thanks to a team very brave, they got the kids out through a water-filled route. Keep your soccer teams out of a…

Cave. Cave, yes. What? I don’t, I’m not sending my kids into any caves. Let’s put it that way, okay? Since the 80s, movie theaters were banned there. In Saudi Arabia, a fanfare.

In 2018, on a cinema screen, folks in Riyadh got to see the…

Black Panther. Black Panther, yes. They finally opened a movie theater in Riyadh after 30 years, and they showed Black Panther.

Here’s the last one. I was sent a link from Annie, sent to her from Manny. Over this MP3, my friends disagree. When I clicked on it, I just heard…

Yanny. No, it was Laurel. It was Laurel. I’m sorry. Nice setup. So close there. We’ll talk to you next week. It’s always a pleasure. See you then.

Bye-bye. And if you want to talk to us about any aspect of language, give us a call, 877-929-9673, or you can send an email to words@waywordradio.org, or talk to us on Twitter at WayWord.

Hi there. You have A Way with Words. Hi. How are you doing? This is Diego. Hey, Diego. Where are you calling us from?

From Orange County, California. Welcome. What can we do for you, Diego? Hi. Yeah. So I was calling, I find myself watching these, you know, historical documentaries pertaining to the Revolutionary War.

A lot of times we depict, like, George Washington as a very stoic figure who is speaking proper English, but very, you know, very stoic and with little to no accent, you know, an American accent.

And so I thought to myself, you know, at that time period, wouldn’t there have been some sort of British accent or some other European accent that our revolutionary leaders at the time or even the general public would have at the time?

And slowly over time, would that have morphed into what is today the American accent? Oh, that’s a good question. So in other words, what did George Washington sound like?

Yeah, exactly. A lot of it’s guesswork. We have some ideas, but the larger themes still hold true, which is nobody who was alive then spoke with an accent that exists now.

So just so you know, so sometimes people assume that for some reason, people assume that the British accent has always been what we know it to be today. That isn’t true.

And the American accent, of course, isn’t true. It wasn’t there at the time, not the same American accent. And even the Southern accent, because he was a Virginia gentleman, right? You might expect him to sound a little bit like today’s.

Virginian gentleman. Even that was very different. So we don’t really know. And I say we meaning people who study this stuff. We have some guesses. His speech was described in letters and documents from the time. But usually it’s amateurs described by talking about the tone of his voice or the coarseness of his language or whether or not he could curse a blue streak. Apparently he could. But some things that we know, he was born in Virginia. He was educated. He was upper class, but he was rural, and all these factors come into play there.

So he probably spoke a little more like upper-class British people of his day than he did like anyone alive today. But he also would have had a pronounced accent to the British ear of the time. They would have recognized that he wasn’t part of their elite and part of the top people of their day, the people in power, the people with authority.

Because what we think of the British accent today and the Southern accent today did not exist in 1732 when he was born. They were not around then. Even the lack of the R’s that we think of, the lack of froticity in British English, wasn’t really a thing then. So British speech was just as R-ful, as they say, then as American speech was. And so in the 219 years since Washington died, the regional accents have changed and they’ve changed a lot. And they also changed during the 67 seven years that he lived on this planet.

So that’s what we know. That’s kind of the summary of it. But people have spent careers trying to figure stuff like this out. So we will never know. We will never know. Until I invent a time machine, we will never know. I’ll go back with my tape machine and figure it out. So we will go on just making our own accents for them as we move forward.

Well, you know, it reminds me. I love when movies and television are clever about accents. The Wallander TV series starring Kenneth Branagh is set in Sweden but has British actors. And so what they did was kind of map the British regional and formal accents to the different characters in this TV series. So even though it’s in Sweden, they’re speaking English, but it’s in English appropriate to the socioeconomic class and status of the character.

So a farmer in Sweden would sound like a British farmer and a politician would sound like a British politician. And so it was very clever. So I think that when we show George Washington with a patrician or educated modern accent, it’s probably the right thing to do. It’s probably the only way you’re not going to be incredibly distracted by this accent you’ve never heard before, which may technically be more accurate. But it’s really just going to derail you as far as believability goes.

Right, right. Okay. That work for you, Diego? I will always wonder that. Yeah. Let me know when the time machine is ready. Diego, my advice for you is to solve this problem for the linguists who come 500 years from now is to record a bunch of tape and leave it in safe places so that your accent, your idiote, Diego, yours will become the one everyone’s like, this is how they spoke in 2018. I hope they can read that media in the future.

Yeah, exactly. All right. Take care now. Okay. Bye-bye. Thank you. 877-929-9673. Remember a few weeks ago we were talking about regional terms for a bump in the road, like tickle bump or belly tickler because you go over it in a car or a carriage or whatever. And a thank you, ma’am. Yeah. Well, funny, you should mention thank you, ma’am, because I found a wonderful use of it in a short story by Oliver Wendell Holmes. This older woman is comforting a younger woman, and she says, we all have our troubles. It isn’t everybody that can ride to heaven in a sea-spring shea, as my poor husband used to say. And life’s a road that’s got a good many thank you, ma’ams to go bumping over, says he. And, of course, the bump in the road is called a thank you, ma’am, because you go over it and your head kind of nods.

Yeah. And you’ve got to catch your hat before it falls off. Yeah. And I love that expression, sea-spring shea. I had to look that up. Oh, nice. A shea is an old word for carriage. You know, it’s related to shea’s lounge. And a sea spring is, you’ve seen these kinds of chairs where it’s just got a curve. But a sea spring shea is a kind of carriage in the old days that was ahead of seat. So instead of a coiled spring, it’s a C-shaped spring with the carriage bottom on top and the axle underneath. That’s what I’m trying to say, a sea spring shea.

Outstanding. 877-929-9673. Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, my name is Debra, and I live in Gates, North Carolina. My husband, he always says, like, when he’s going to do something, like, for the first time, he don’t like to do things over. And he’d be like, sometimes he’d be like, I don’t like, let me do this right, because he don’t like licking the cat over. And he’s said it so many times. He’s from the eastern shores of Virginia. So I was wondering where did that phrase come from or is it something that he just says, you know, because he told me that when he was growing up, like house chores and things like that, his dad would always be on him. That’s why he always tried to make it a habit of, you know, getting it right the first time because he don’t like to lick the cat over.

He doesn’t want to have to redo it, right? Yeah. Yes. As far as we can tell, it just has to do with, you know, that process that you see cats go through where they start with a paw and they’re licking there. And then they’re rubbing it behind their ear and then they’re licking their shoulder and then they’re licking their other shoulder. And then they lick, you know, back there and down there and kind of all over the place. It’s a long process. And then if you ruffle their fur or they get a little dust on them, they start over. They start all over. And so it’s very repetitive and kind of meditative. I always like watching cats just do that. And, you know, they take their own sweet time when they do that. But then once you finally get finished, once the cat finally gets finished, you know, you don’t want to have to do it all over again. I mean, it’s sort of the same thing for people. You know, once you accomplish that task that has so many different parts, you don’t want to do it all over again.

And it’s odd about this expression. It doesn’t really show up in books of idioms and phrases and things like that. But we do find it in newspapers back at least to the 1940s. I’m looking at a newspaper from Amarillo, Texas, and somebody says, you early garden planters had better take it a little slow if you don’t want to have to lick the cat over. It does pop up in some newspapers from North Carolina, which is curious. I know you said he was from Virginia, but has he lived in North Carolina a long time? Well, I know there’s a lot of Tatums because I’m married to the Tatums. There’s a lot of Tatums in Carolina and New Jersey and New York. Okay. But we find it in Texas, Oklahoma, North Carolina. As far back as the mid-1940s. Wow. Okay. And, Debra, I think you’ve probably just helped popularize that expression with people who didn’t know it because it’s a wonderful one, right? It’s really picturesque.

Yeah, it is. Really, it is. I don’t want to have to lick the cat over. Debra, thank you for your call and thanks for sharing. I really appreciate it. Oh, thank you, guys. I truly love you guys so very much. Thank you. Take care now. Call us again sometime. Thank you. All righty. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. 877-929-9673. Hi there. You have A Way with Words. Hi, Martha. Hi, Grant. My name is Julie. I’m calling from San Francisco. Hey, Julie. Welcome. What’s up? Thanks. So I’m calling about kind of a quirk I noticed this last summer. I’m a journalism student at San Francisco State and got a dream job covering the Giants this past season.

And obviously with baseball, there are a ton of weird linguistic quirks.

But one thing I noticed just talking with players and coaches and transcribing interviews for many, many hours is that there was this weird preference for somebody, nobody, everybody versus like anyone, everyone, no one.

And naturally for me, I would say I would have the preference for the one versus the body.

But I’m from the West Coast, and I got the impression that this was most prominent among players from the South, which there’s a ton of players from Major League Baseball do come out of the South.

But the thing that I also noticed was that it was kind of this almost dialectical feature, like it spread to other players from other places too, even players that didn’t have English as their first language.

So I wasn’t sure if this is something that’s more common in Southern dialects.

I didn’t know if it was something you could look up on the DARE database or if you guys knew anything about it, but I was just kind of curious if this was something anyone else had noticed.

So you’re hearing them say pronouns like somebody instead of someone or anybody instead of anyone.

There is, as far as I know, no research that has been done on the distribution of pronouns like this in the United States.

No regional maps have been drawn.

Nobody gathered a lot of data just for these kinds of pronouns.

It’s really mostly unexplored territory.

I don’t think, however, I consider myself a relatively informed linguist.

I don’t believe, however, despite the absence of this work, that there’s any regionality to it at all.

I think what you’re hearing is a formality versus informality difference.

Players, the culture of players is to speak informally, and there is a slightly more informal tone to anybody, somebody, everybody than there is anyone, someone, everyone.

Yeah, it just seems like it’s pretty consistent even talking to the press, which is what made me think that it was just sort of, I think, when you’re with a group of people for six months, day and night, it seems to make sense that they would almost form their own dialect.

Well, they certainly borrow from each other.

Yeah, no question.

People who are working in the same enterprise and the same working hard together all the time, you absolutely start to talk like one another.

Yeah, it made sense.

I was just kind of curious because there are so many leaders on that team that are from the South.

So I wondered if it was a trickle-down thing or what that was.

Yeah, I get that.

But my belief is here that what you’re hearing is a formality difference.

And really important, though, you may know the answer to this, is do you feel like there’s a culture to urge these guys not to put on airs and to act too big for their britches and to keep their arrogance down despite whatever kind of money they might be making or what kind of adulation they might get from the crowd?

As I understand it, in baseball, your teammates will put you down if you act too big for your britches, right?

I mean, yeah, absolutely, especially with the rookies.

I’ve talked to some of the older veterans, and they say that’s actually part of their job.

They view it as part of their job is when rookies come up and they’re doing really well to make sure that they don’t get too tall to walk in the door.

I like that expression.

Too tall to walk in the door.

I love that.

So that couples with what I was saying about kind of stressing their casualness and their informality and is a way of saying I’m not stuck up.

I’m not too good for everyone.

And I think anybody, everybody, somebody, I think that does that just a little bit.

Otherwise, the pronouns are identical.

They have no functional difference whatsoever.

Anybody and anyone are functionally exactly the same.

It’s just that there’s the pragmatics change a little bit.

Can we go back to the top of this and just say congratulations on that gig, by the way.

To be a cup reporter and reporting on one of the top baseball teams must be amazing.

Yes, I got very lucky.

I’m very excited about it, so thank you.

I’m hoping to continue doing it next season.

Not to mention sports writing is the best writing in the newspaper, right?

Yeah, they let you get away with a lot more.

Well, they need to.

I don’t quite fit it in the press box.

I’m the short girl with lots of tattoos and bright-colored hair next to all the old dudes.

I’ve got to tell you, it sounds like you’re going to show them.

I hope so.

Well, good luck and call us again sometime when you find out more like this, all right?

Thanks so much. Have a good one.

All right. Take care.

Thanks, Julie. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673 or on Twitter @wayword.

Our conversation about towns that have names that don’t sound like the way they’re spelled prompted an email from Chris Williams who said, a town near where I grew up in north-central Indiana is spelled Rushaville, but it’s actually pronounced like Rouchaville.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah.

And apparently the founder, or it was named for a guy whose last name was Richardville.

So the French pronunciation corrupted into the English mouths.

Yeah, but it looks like Rushaville.

Rushaville.

Gotcha.

877-929-9673.

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.

Whenever there’s a writer I really like and I hear that they’re teaching a class at a university or college, I always try to imagine what that must be like to be sitting there in their class, hearing them.

Right, soaking it up, right? Learning from them.

Yes, what exactly do they do?

If you want a taste of how Annie Dillard teaches students, check out an essay by Alexander Chee.

It’s in the Morning News, which is an online magazine.

And he took a class with Annie Dillard in 1989.

And he really gives you a sense in this long essay about what that must have been like.

And one of the things that he said she emphasized again and again and again is the importance of verbs.

She had the students take an essay that they’d written, and then they cut up the essay sentence by sentence.

And they cut out the very best sentences, like literally cut it out from a piece of paper and put them on the floor and then start writing sentences to connect their very best sentences.

Oh, yeah. I’ve heard of this technique.

Oh, really? Really? Super cool.

And the other thing that she had them do was something that she supposedly learned from Samuel Johnson.

She makes them count their verbs and see if they can up their verb count per page.

I’ve never heard of that.

Isn’t that interesting?

That’s astonishing.

Yeah.

And so, of course, after I read all these instructions from Annie Dillard, I thought, I’ve got to go back and look at her book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, which is one of my favorites.

And I went back to this image that’s haunted me for decades since I read it the first time.

She’s talking about walking alongside a creek, and she sees a frog sticking out of the water.

And she writes, appalled. An oval shadow hung in the water behind the drain frog. Then the shadow glided away. I had read about the giant water bug, but never seen one. The frog I saw was being sucked by a giant water bug. I’d been kneeling on the island grass when the unrecognizable flap of frog skin settled on the creek bottom, swaying. I stood up and brushed the knees of my pants. I couldn’t catch my breath. That was a verb explosion, wasn’t it?

Verb explosion. I was trying to count and I lost count.

Well, that is wonderful.

Yeah, well, not for the frog.

You can watch, I went to YouTube and you can see videos of this.

It’s awful with these giant water bugs due to frogs.

I’ve never heard of that. I didn’t know they existed.

It was so compelling. That image has haunted me all these years.

How can the beauty of such writing compare with the thing that she’s writing about? What a kind of counterpoint.

Yeah, right.

So that’s wonderful.

I got to say, now I have to check out Annie Dillard and all her books.

Yes, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

And the article was by Alexander Chee and in the online magazine, The Morning News, right?

Yes.

Check it out.

We’d love to hear from you about your favorite books and your favorite writing and your writing techniques.

Let us know, 877-929-9673.

You can also go to our website at waywordradio.org and leave us a message where you can also find all of our past episodes.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Kim. I’m calling from Asoyas, British Columbia, Canada.

Oh, well, welcome to the show.

Hi, Kim. Welcome.

I studied some linguistics in university, but recently I’ve gotten to the healthcare industry.

So I’m learning anatomy and biology and all that, so lots of fun, interesting words.

But learning anatomy, I got to the chest, and the little bone right below the sternum is called the xiphoid process,

And it just struck me as odd.

Two interesting words that I just didn’t think, like process as a bone.

I just didn’t understand it.

Oh, Kim, I’m fanning myself.

Hold me back here because this is really exciting for me.

I once wanted to write a book on the poetry of your anatomy because so much of this is just gorgeous poetry.

If you think back to the ancient Greeks and Romans,

And they’re trying to figure out how to name all these different body parts and bones.

I mean, you mentioned that you’re running into some interesting names, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Like the tibia in your leg.

It comes from the Latin word that means flute.

It’s a long, straight bone, right?

Wow.

Yeah, isn’t that gorgeous?

And there are just so many of those.

Like your pelvis, that comes from the Greek word for a wooden bowl.

So this is the little bit of cartilage that extends downward towards your navel from your sternum.

Am I getting that right?

Yes.

And it looks like the end of a sword.

And ziphos in Greek means sword.

And the process may be the word that’s tripping you up there.

Process functions as a noun that means a projection from a bone.

Like you have your coracoid process that’s up in your shoulder.

And that’s another cool one, too, because it comes from the Latin word for raven because it looks like a raven beak.

It’s this little thing.

Wow.

Yeah.

And what’s really cool about the sternum is that the whole thing is shaped like a little sword, right?

Mm—

Yeah.

So at the top, you have the manubrium, which comes from the Latin word for hand.

It’s a handle.

In the middle, the middle part of the sternum that’s going down, that long part, is called the gladiolus,

Which you might guess comes from the Latin word for sword, like gladiator,

And gladiolus, which has sword-like leaves.

And the xiphoid process is, or xiphoid process,

Is the part that sticks out like the point of a sword.

So that’s X-I-P-H-O-I-D, right?

Xiphoid.

And I want to go back, process.

So process meaning to stick out as a natural outgrowth,

Meaning to advance or to go forward, right?

To proceed, right?

That is fascinating.

I definitely think you should write a book about that.

There are so many beautiful names.

Should I put another quarter in here and see where we get this time?

I will just leave you with, I think the scientific name for swordfish is Ziphyus gladius or something like that.

How cool is that?

There we go.

Right?

Wow.

That is amazing.

Kim, thank you so much for your call.

We really appreciate it.

Thank you, Martha.

Thank you, Grant.

Call us again sometime with more of these words.

It sounds like Martha had a really good time.

I would love to.

Yes.

Thank you.

All right.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

In your work, there’s strange language that makes you have questions.

We have answers.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

And you can also send us a tweet @wayword.

Our conversation about having too many books in your library and having to get rid of some of them prompted an email from Jen Zahorchuk of Essex, New York.

Jen wrote,

When you were speaking about the emotions attached to culling books,

I thought of the shelves that hold our field guides from our travels before we had kids.

Of course, so much of this reference data is online now,

But there’s nothing like hiking into the wilderness with a book in your pack

And the hopes of coming across a critter or a plant you’ve never seen before.

I don’t think we’ll get back to Hawaii, Scotland, or the Galapagos anytime soon,

But we just can’t part with these dear books.

And I love that because I think of books that I bought in advance of travels, and they’re really outdated now.

A lot of the restaurants in there are probably closed, but I just can’t get rid of them.

Yeah, I have an attachment to books like that, a gift from a friend which he wrote the year inside.

Oh, yeah.

Or the book that I read and didn’t much care for, but I read it in Paris in the rain at a cafe with a friend, you know, that sort of thing.

Right.

You keep because it’s like the book is the memory.

Right.

Regardless of what’s inside almost.

Yes, exactly.

If you want to talk to us about your relationship with books or describe it in an email, call us 877-929-9673 or send those emails to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how are you? This is Laura Morales and I am from New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Welcome, Laura. What’s going on?

Well, my mother uses this word quite often, bloody.

And I know it’s a British expression, and I always thought that it was not a very nice word, like a swear word.

But I don’t know, so I wanted to clarify and see what it really means.

-huh. And how would she use it in a sentence?

She would use it probably in a negative way, I want to say.

But would she say, this bloody car won’t start again, something like that?

Yes, something to that nature, yes.

And your sense is that it’s some kind of swear-like?

Yes, I always thought it was, but I’m not sure, so I hope you can help me out.

Yeah, we surely can.

There’s a line I like in a book about swearing.

It’s Jeffrey Hughes in the Encyclopedia of Swearing.

And he talks about bloody, and he says,

It is common in British English, essential in Australian English, but rare in American English.

It’s really unusual for Americans to use this repeatedly and habitually.

Usually when we use it, it’s because we’re imitating an Australian or a British person,

Or we’re just being ironic or trying it on for size.

But as far as everyday usage, bloody isn’t really an American thing.

So your mother is an outlier.

Whether or not it’s offensive, I’ll tell you this.

In Australia, it’s so common that it’s been called the great Australian adjective,

Although usually it’s an adjective, and you will even hear it in Australia in Parliament.

People have been known to say it and not have suffered any kind of censure or any kind of reprimand from the people in charge.

So in the UK, it’s a little more, how should I put this, has a little more negative force to it,

But you still will hear it even though now it’s considered a little passé and old-fashioned

And isn’t the kind of thing that the everyday person is likely to say

Without recognizing that it’s more of their parents’ generation

Or their grandparents’ generation.

Is it negative?

It is negative.

It’s like darn.

It is just about the offensive weight of the word darn.

Not the word damn, but the word darn, D-A-R-N.

Oh, then she’ll be happy to use it.

This darn card, yeah.

But, you know, there’s a lot of asterisks on that.

There’s a lot of footnotes to that, which is I’m talking about the American usage.

Most Americans wouldn’t even blink to hear it or to say it.

It just doesn’t have any kind of impact here because it’s just not ours.

Right.

So if she travels to England, probably she should refrain.

I know.

It’s kind of interesting because she doesn’t know where she picked it up from.

But I’ve noticed, like, recently within the last year or so, she says it quite a lot.

So darn.

Well, that’s really good.

I thought it was always a very bad word.

So I’m glad we’ve straightened that out.

And again, there’s a lot of caveating and hedging on that.

But at least to the American ear, it’s just like, darn.

How about that?

I will say if you’re still bothered by it, you don’t have to give in to her.

There are a lot of other euphemisms.

When bloody used to be more offensive, let’s say 80 years ago, because it was more offensive back then.

A lot of other euphemisms came up to replace it, such as ruddy or blithering or blinking or bleeding or blooming.

So you could say, this ruddy car won’t start again.

But none of those sound very American either, do they?

No, not at all.

This blinking car won’t start again.

I’ve heard that before, though.

Yeah.

What do you use, Laura?

Well, I’ve heard of a lot of people using the S word for sugar.

They’ll say, oh, sugar.

Right.

-huh.

The sugary car.

All right.

Well, Laura, I’m glad we were able to help.

And if your mom would like to, you know, if she wants to come back to us and tell us exactly what she thinks about Bloody, we would welcome that call.

All right?

Oh, that would be great.

Yeah, tell her to call that Bloody show.

Thanks, Laura.

Call the Bloody show.

That’s great.

All right.

Take care.

Give our best to your mom.

Oh, it was very nice speaking with you, and you have a great day now.

You too.

Bye-bye.

Thanks, Laura.

You too.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

And if you’ve got something naughty that you want to talk about on Twitter, hit us up @wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi there. This is Travis Bartos calling from Austin, Texas.

Hi, Travis. Welcome to the show.

Hey, Travis.

What’s up?

Hey, so I was calling because growing up, we would always play the classic game of deciding conflicts where you either choose, you know, paper, scissors or rock.

Yeah. And I’m calling because growing up, I’ve always called it.

Well, just that paper, scissors, rock.

And I’ve recently been receiving quite a bit of pushback insisting that it is rock, paper, scissors.

And I will argue constantly against it that it is paper, scissors, rock.

So I was just wondering if y’all could help clarify this and see if I’m just crazy or what’s going on.

Why didn’t you just do a round of the game to figure out who gets to win?

We couldn’t agree on what to call it first.

That’s great.

So you’re talking about the game where you play this game with your hands, where your hand symbolizes rock, a fist symbolizes rock, flat hand symbolizes paper, and two fingers symbolize scissors, and scissors beats paper, and rock beats scissors, right?

Yes, exactly.

Okay.

And so your version is what again?

Paper, scissors, rock.

Paper, scissors, rock.

But the people around you are calling it rock, paper, scissors.

Yeah, yeah.

And I strongly believe that ending on the rock just gives it that little oomph while you’re throwing out either rock, paper, scissors.

Yeah, maybe.

And are you from Austin originally?

I grew up in Houston.

Grew up in Houston.

Okay.

And everybody else who’s saying rock, paper, scissors is from Austin or someplace else?

Yeah.

And in fact, I was just over Thanksgiving talking to my brother and it came up and I called it rock, paper, scissors.

And he looked at me even and called me a monster.

That’s hilarious.

Well, you know what?

I have to throw in another wrench here because I grew up in Kentucky and I would swear to you that it was called scissors, paper, rock.

Don’t.

And I actually almost came to blows with.

Well, not really.

But I just had an argument with somebody from New York who said, oh, no, no, no, it’s rock, paper, scissors.

And apparently, you know what?

You and I are in the minority, both of us.

Oh, no.

Because the far more common version in this country is rock, paper, scissors.

And in fact, there’s a world rock, paper, scissors society that has world championships.

I don’t know how active they are anymore.

No, but they have in the past had a lot of world championships.

However, the majority need not win on this one, Travis, right?

Okay.

Just because everyone does it doesn’t mean you have to.

And I will tell you what I did.

I went through the newspaper archives and looked for all six variations of this name.

Because this is what Grant does.

Yes.

And I will tell you the oldest one that I found, although it’s not the oldest one for sure,

It was from 1935, and it was paper, rock, scissors.

Rock, scissors, paper from 1937.

Scissors, paper, rock from 1941.

Paper, scissors, rock from 1948.

Rock, paper, scissors from 1961.

And scissors, rock, paper from 1964.

Now, that doesn’t mean anything either.

First, it doesn’t necessarily mean right or best.

But I’m just saying all of the variations have been and continue to be used to describe this game.

And that doesn’t even factor in England.

Right.

In England, it’s paper, scissors, stone.

Or sometimes scissors, paper, stone.

Right.

And it might be something different in Australia.

And the other thing is, if we’re really going to talk about first and best and right,

Let’s go all the way over to East Asia.

Let’s do the Japanese and call it Jankenpon.

So everyone’s wrong and everyone’s right.

And there’s no good answer for this.

Continue to fight.

Make sure the winner gets barbecue.

I don’t know what to tell you.

All right.

Well, thank you all very much for having a little bit more confusion into it.

Yeah, that’s our job.

No, but really, like if people get all worked up about this, and I hope it’s all good natured, just they need to relax a little bit.

Variation exists.

Variation is interesting.

Families say things amongst themselves that belong to those families.

And don’t let the outside world tell you that it shouldn’t be paper, scissors, rock, which is what you prefer.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

Well, thank you all very much.

Go forth and prosper, Travis.

I will.

Take care.

Bye.

Take care.

Thank you.

Thanks to senior producer Stefanie Levine, director Colin Tedeschi, editor Tim Felten,

And production assistant Tamar Wittenberg. You can send us a message, subscribe to the podcast,

Get the newsletter, or 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 send us your thoughts to words@waywordradio.org.

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

A nonprofit supported by listeners and organizations

Who are changing the way the world talks about language.

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. you