Crusticles and Fenderbergs (episode #1491)

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.

On Twitter, Rachel Whitinger asks,

Is there a name for working on a computer until it’s all the way dark and there is only the light of the screen?

This thing should have a word. Screen-harthing?

Screen-harthing?

You know that feeling when you’ve just been focused on your computer?

Oh, I do know it, yeah. In the zone for hours.

In the zone.

Skipped a meal, haven’t gone to the restroom, didn’t get up.

Right.

You’re starving.

Failed to answer the door.

What do you think about screen hearthing?

Maybe screen setting.

It’s like the sunset outside.

Oh, interesting.

Screen setting.

You know, it’s interesting.

I said focus.

You’ve been focusing all that time.

And the word focus in Latin means hearth or fireplace.

So I kind of like that.

Oh, because it’s the focus of the family activity?

Yeah, it’s the focus of the house.

Oh, interesting.

How cool is that, right?

It could be, right?

The focal point of a house.

The focal point.

But I kind of like either screen hearthing or screens.

Screen hearthing is too hard to say.

You’re right.

It is, especially at the end of a long day when the sun has gone down and you’re just illuminated by your screen.

You’re glowing.

I know you’ve had this experience.

I used to do that when I was an IT guy.

I would go in on weekends and holidays because nobody was there and you could turn off the servers and do stuff like that.

And I would literally leave the office and not know what time of day it was.

I have no idea.

What the weather was that day?

It could have been 7 p.m. or 3 a.m.

I have no idea.

Maybe it’s bigger than screen, though.

You know, like when you go into work really early and the sun hasn’t come up yet,

And then you go home and it’s dark because you’ve had a really long day.

Maybe it’s bigger than that.

It says something about the complexity of the modern workplace where they expect you to work like that.

Exactly.

Well, you know, I know a lot of people who are very interested in language and who may have suggestions for us.

And they have lots of opinions, I’ve found.

Mm-about all different kinds of things involving words.

And they can call us at 877-929-9673 or email us, words@waywordradio.org, or talk to us on the Twitter @wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Gene. I’m calling from South Burlington, Vermont.

Hi, Gene. Welcome to the show.

What’s going on, Gene?

Okay, the word I have for you is crustical.

A little bit of background on this.

I have worked as a deckhand on the Lake Champlain ferries.

There’s three crossings on Lake Champlain.

And in the wintertime, I don’t work the winters anymore, but we used to have arguments,

Friendly arguments, about the accumulation of salt and dirt in the wheel wells of cars

And trucks that would get deposited on the decks of the ferries.

And it got to be a pain, actually, to move these chunks.

They had some indelicate words to use to describe these chunks of ice, frozen material.

And then one of the guys came up with the idea that he had heard somewhere that the word was crustical,

That was inside the wheel well of a truck or a car.

And I was wondering if it was just a regionalism.

He didn’t know where the word came from except that he heard it from somebody else and whether it was invented.

Or if you have any idea of a history of the word or if it’s been used in that context before.

Interesting. I was going to ask you how you felt about crusticles because, of course, we don’t live where there’s snow and ice.

But I sort of have fond memories of them, of kicking them out of the wheel wells.

Oh, so satisfying.

Yeah, it’s kind of like bubble wrap, you know, squeezing bubble wrap or something.

When it comes out perfectly formed with the shape of the inner wheel well, that’s the best moment.

Well, I can tell you that my wife just about 30 minutes ago,

She had to go outside and scrape the melted crusticles off the garage floor,

And she wasn’t too happy about it.

No, no.

I guess it’s different when you don’t live there.

Now, we haven’t come across this term before, Jean.

In Vermont, actually.

In Vermont, yeah.

We’ve got an email from Judy Bond in 2015.

We talked about something like this on the show before.

Okay.

And she said that she knew it and learned it from the Burlington newspaper.

Oh.

Yeah, I think you all had some kind of contest or something to name those things.

And somebody came up with it.

And we didn’t have a contest, but we had so many people with their own terms.

The snow snot, I think, was one of them.

I like Fenderberg.

Fenderberg is a great one.

Fenderberg, yeah.

No, I hadn’t heard those, no.

Yeah, or carcical.

So maybe that’s where he had heard the word.

Yeah, it could be.

It doesn’t Google all that well, or it does Google, but for some more offensive things.

Don’t go to Urban Dictionary’s definition for it.

But I looked in the newspaper databases, and I don’t, it just doesn’t come up that much.

But it’s a logical word.

It makes a lot of sense.

And the ickle suffix is what we call in linguistics very productive.

Lots of things have ickle added to them to mean something made of hard ice.

Yeah, because some of these that would come off of 18-wheelers on trucks,

And we would have as many, the ferries are pretty long.

They’re 200-plus feet long, and we would have as many as four or five tractor trailers on.

And on a winter’s day, they would come up the ramp, and they would bounce along,

And they would get onto the boat.

And these chunks, some of them are pretty big, five, ten pounds worth of ice.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, we would have to, you know, shovel them off.

And when you have just a channel on the crossing, you would be shoveling this stuff off,

And you’d see it on the lake for the next three or four weeks.

You know, it would still be there because the temperatures would stay really low.

Right, right.

Well, I can see why you might have an off-color name for those things if they’re making your life that difficult.

What’s interesting to me is that there are so many different names for these things that people have just made up and use around the country, like slush puppy or kickies because you kick them off, but nothing really canonical.

Right, nothing that stuck for everyone.

Yeah.

Well, Fenderberg sounds pretty good, too.

I like that one.

That’s a nice sound, too, right?

I like that one, too.

Gene, you have our sympathies out here on the West Coast.

Good luck with the crusticles.

That’s part of what it is living up in the north, yes.

Take care.

It’s a beautiful town.

Okay, thank you. Bye.

This is unrelated, but it reminded me of one of the tricks we used to play on people when I worked in fast food as a teenager.

What?

Well, he was talking about his wife cleaning the ice off the floor of the garage and how much she hated it.

Yeah.

We used to tell the newbies to get a wet mop and go mop the walk-in freezer floor.

Oh, no.

How can I have known you all these years and I never knew until just now that you used to do it?

I’m sure we talked about this before.

You used to do that to new days.

Yeah, and they don’t quite realize that the mop is going to freeze and it’s going to be ugly real soon.

Really?

Did they do that to you too?

Oh, yeah.

There was all kinds of little miniature hazing.

But my brother and I, we instituted all kinds of new hazing.

Oh, like sending people for striped paint?

Yeah, yeah.

I even brought up one that I’d learned from Mark Twain, the hazing that he went through when he worked for his brother’s printing press.

They had to look for type lice, which doesn’t exist.

Type lice.

And so we invented ice cream lice, and we told the frontline people who worked the soft ice cream machines to be on the lookout for ice cream lice.

They had to be, yeah, there’s no such thing.

Oh, my gosh.

I’m glad I was a freelancer all these years.

Anyway, 877-929-9673.

In his book Bleak House, Charles Dickens coined the term growlery, which he used to mean a place to growl in, like your private sitting room, you know, the place where you just go to sulk.

Grumpy.

Which is funny because the word boudoir comes from the French word that means to sulk.

It was originally the place where the woman went to sort of pout.

So the growlery is the masculine version of the boudoir.

Yeah, sort of like the man cave, I guess.

Now bourgeois has different connotations.

It does indeed.

Suggests romance.

Yes, but it goes back to this image of pouting.

When did we leave this wonderful time when we create rooms for every emotion?

Where’s my…

I know, right?

We have the thinking room.

We all know what that room is.

Yeah, I know that room.

We have this sleeping room.

The magazine room.

The magazine room, yeah.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha.

Hi, Grant.

This is Mary Bell Scott from Montgomery, Alabama.

Hi, Mary Bell. Welcome to the show.

Hey, Mary Bell. Welcome.

What do we do for you?

Well, at work, when we are really busy, we will tell people that we are slamming.

Or that if we’re just covered up with work, that we are slammed.

Where do you work?

I work at a doctor’s office in Montgomery Cardiovascular Associates.

I do stress tests there.

Okay.

And if we get really busy, then slamming gets a whole new syllable.

It’s slamming.

Slamming.

Let me ask you, is this when customers come in without an appointment and you kind of have all this unexpected business?

No, not necessarily.

People get there and everything is supposed to be nice and smooth.

And sometimes there are little hitches and things have backed up.

And actually, I’ve heard that expression and used it myself for decades.

Did you ever work in food service?

No.

No.

I never did.

Because all the people who have worked in food service, they probably know this.

Oh, do they?

Cool.

Being slammed is really common in the restaurant business or the catering business.

And I’m wondering, too, if you use slam as an adverb to say, like, we’re slam full.

Yes.

Yeah, because that’s kind of a southernism to say we’re slam full or I ate so much food, I’m slam full.

As an emphatic.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, so I’m thinking that those might be connected.

Slam full and slamming.

But I think the food service connection is also strong, right?

Oh, I’ve heard lots of people.

It means in the weeds to be slammed.

Is there anything specific that attached that to food service?

No.

Are they talking like door slamming between the kitchen and the serving area?

No, I think it has to do with the really basic meaning of to slam, which means to hit hard.

So if a lot of customers show up all at once, you feel like you’ve been hit hard.

Like two buses pull up in the parking lot and you’re like, oh, put the burgers on!

Fixing to get slammed.

Fixing to get slammed.

You are fixing to get slammed.

Getting hit hard.

Wow.

Well, Maribel, thank you so much for sharing that language with us.

I know you’ve got a bunch more, so you’re going to have to call us again sometime and share some more, all right?

I will do it.

All right, take care.

Bye-bye.

Thank you guys so much.

Sure thing.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

We want to hear the language from your workplace.

Call us 877-929-9673 or send it in email to words@waywordradio.org.

On our Facebook group, Audley Robinson wrote, while walking in the wood near my home, I came across a sign that stated, no flogging allowed and oddly realized that someone had added an F to the logging.

And this prompted a whole discussion from people who had seen people who improved on signs.

For example, Jenna Schnoor in Alaska said that on a trail around a local lake, somebody had changed thin ice to think nice.

Sure.

I love that.

And then you’ll appreciate this.

Mary Ellen Brooks wrote that she saw a sign that said, speed zone ahead, change to speed on ahead.

Oops.

That’s like the scratching on the hand dryers in the restroom.

They’re often modified to say push button becomes push butt.

Oh, really?

Maybe in the boys.

The boys room is a little different.

I also like this one from Umus and Keaton Smith, who says, I used to live in northeast Portland near Flanders Street.

Someone added a D after the N-E, so the sign said Ned Flanders Street.

You want those to be ensconced and become permanent.

Right, for all you Simpsons fans out there.

877-929-9673.

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

Stick around.

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

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

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

Hi, John.

Hi, John.

Hi, Martha.

Hi, Grant.

I set myself a task this week to come up with a quiz based on a random phrase.

And when I thought to do this, I was walking up the subway stairs, and immediately the first thing I saw was a coffee cup sitting at the top of the stairs.

Now, today’s quiz is called Coffee Cup.

Here’s how it works.

I’ll give you a word and then a definition of the word that I want that word to be.

Now, the only way we’ll get the new word is by adding an M, like milk, or an S for sugar.

Now, sometimes you may have to add both milk and sugar, an M and an S, or multiples of them.

For example, if the word is cap, C-A-P, but what I really need is a place to pitch my tent, your answer would be…

Camp, we’re adding one M.

One milk, that’s right, very good.

If the word was foil, F-O-I-L, but what I really need is a relic of the past, your answer would be…

Fossil, so that’d be two S’s, two sugars.

Two S’s, right, very good.

Or sugar and soy.

Sugar and soy, very good.

Very modern, I like that.

Let’s order a few.

The word is now, but what I really want is cold weather precipitation.

Snow.

We’re adding an S.

Yes, very good.

The word is cob, but what I really need is a common tonsorial tool.

That would be a comb, so you’re adding one M.

C-O-M-B.

Tonsorial.

Very nice.

Very nice word, tonsorial.

Tonsorial.

The word is pal, but what I really want is a sacred song or poem.

Psalm, right?

P-S-A-L-M, adding an S and an M.

Yes, an S and an M.

It has both milk and sugar.

Yes, very good.

Psalm.

The word is tar, but what I really need is a monarch or emperor.

Okay.

Sar, right?

T-S-A-R, adding an S.

T-S-A-R, yes.

The word is halo, but what I really want is peace in Israel.

You would be adding an S and an M to make shalom.

Shalom.

Sugar and milk.

And shalom to you as well.

Now, I was given a T, T-E-A, but what I really want is what’s coming out of the teapot.

Steam.

Steam, yes.

And an S and an M for steam.

S and an M. Very good.

The word is coerce, but what I really want is the buying and selling of goods.

Two M’s.

Two M’s, yeah, for commerce.

Two M’s. Double milk. Very good.

Yeah.

The word is ink, but what I really want is the capital city of Belarus.

Minsk.

M and an S.

Minsk is right.

The word is eBay, but what I really want is my country’s headquarters in another country.

An embassy.

An embassy.

An embassy.

An embassy.

Two S’s.

That’s right.

I’m taking my coffee and getting out of here.

Yeah, where’s the coffee?

I left yours at the top of the stairs so you could pick it on your way up the stairs.

Oh, go on.

I’m ready now.

At the top of every New York City subway platform staircase, there is a cup of coffee waiting there for you.

Waiting for me.

No, thank you.

But thank you, John.

Thanks, John.

We appreciate it.

Talk to you next week.

Thank you, guys.

Bye.

Bye.

We’d love to talk with you about any aspect of language, so call us, 877-929-9673, or send us an email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

We have a very active Facebook group, and you can find us on Twitter at WayWord.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is John calling from New York City.

Hi, John. Welcome to the show.

Hi, John.

What can we do for you?

Well, my question is something that I’ve been pondering my entire adult life, basically.

I’ve grown up speaking multiple languages, primarily English and Tagalog, which is the national language of the Philippines.

And I learned both languages simultaneously as a child and still speak Tagalog fluently now as an adult.

And it was funny when I heard your show while I was in San Diego.

That question popped up immediately because I was in the car with my family speaking Tagalog, speaking English.

And I found myself code switching pretty seamlessly.

But I caught myself changing, I guess, personalities.

I found myself, you know, when I spoke English, I was very forthright, very direct, very matter-of-fact speaking.

But then when I co-switched over to Tagalog, I found myself a bit less aggressive-sounding, I guess.

I felt myself sounding more compassionate, kinder, more soft-spoken.

I struggled, you know, speaking with my mom in particular.

So I guess I just wanted to know from your end if you’ve come across any research or anything that you’ve known just, you know, through your experience.

If there is such a thing as personality changes when one person switches from one language to another, especially when they’re from two very separate language families.

I love this.

Wow.

This is great, John.

This is a question that many people spend a lot of time looking into.

Yeah, and you were speaking with family who learned both languages the same way you did?

No, no.

So my mom and her sisters, they grew up in the Philippines.

So Tagalog was their first language, and English was the academic language that they used in school.

I see.

Whereas for me, it was switched because English, you know, I grew up in California.

So English was used everywhere, and I would only use Tagalog at home.

Yeah, so the question’s really important that Martha asked there.

Because one of the main reasons people feel like a different person when they speak a different language is that the context is different.

And by that, I mean you, when you speak Tagalog, you are speaking to people who you respect.

You’re speaking to your elders, right?

You’re speaking to your mother, maybe your grandparents, your aunts and uncles.

Family, yeah.

Family. And when you speak English, that’s kind of like the language of everyday life where those bonds of respect aren’t necessarily going to be in place.

The other thing is, and I don’t know that this is true for these two languages, but sometimes when people talk about feeling like a different person when they speak a different language, they have an imperfect understanding of one of the languages or both of them.

And so they have a different inventory of words that they’re trying to work with.

And then the third factor, and maybe this is more important to you, is the culture that goes along with the language, where English, for example, doesn’t have, say, a formal U or a formal VU form or anything like that.

And I think Tagalog does have some formal registers.

There’s some things that you do, right?

And the honorifics may be more explicit in Tagalog than they are in English and some things like that.

Yes, definitely.

But you’re not alone on this.

And there’s so much to say on this that I don’t think Martha and I could, we could spend a couple hours with you.

And I’d love to talk about it for a couple hours.

But I want to recommend a book to you that I think will get you started on this.

It’s called Life with Two Languages, an Introduction to Bilingualism.

It’s by François, I don’t know if he pronounces his last name in French.

But it’s Grosjean in French, G-R-O-S-J-E-A-N.

Yes, I just looked it up.

It looks like Grosjean, yeah, Life with Two Languages.

And there may be a new edition, but the edition that I have is published in 1982.

And he really gets into this.

And there’s been a lot more work done since he started it.

But I think his work is a good place for you to begin.

That’s great. Thank you so much.

I’m really happy that you brought that up.

It’s very enlightening and empowering.

Especially when being second-generation Filipino-American.

And there’s definitely that language barrier between my mom and her sisters and myself.

And I try very hard to use my Tagalog skills to connect with them and to maintain my relationship.

And, you know, hearing all that is just, you know, pretty mind-blowing.

So I really appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

It’s our pleasure.

And I want to add one thing to that, John.

I want to reframe what you just said.

Part of the reason that you’re hearing a difference in the two languages is because of you.

You are putting the love that you have for your Tagalog-speaking family into your relationships with them.

It’s coming out in your words and your words choices.

So you’re kind of echoing back to yourself the love that’s automatically already there.

So it’s not only on the language.

It’s as much as a relationship as anything.

That’s amazing.

Thank you.

I’m getting goosebumps.

Well, another thing I want to tell you before you go, this actually happens in English, where people will talk at length about why words, say, of Latin at origin don’t feel as real to them as words of an Anglo-Saxon or Germanic origin.

Even within words that are fully Anglicized and are completely English, people still say that they can feel a difference in the tone and quality of their word choices based on the original language that the word came from.

It’s really cool.

Do you have a specific example between Anglicized and Latin words so that I get a better understanding?

Oh, yeah.

So the naughty words, for example, the way we talk about the sex act, for example, if we were to use the more Latinate words that are a little more like the romance languages, like intercourse or copulate or fornication.

Versus the words that we can’t say on the air for the act.

Yes, yes.

Yeah, a little more distance there.

That’s great, that’s great.

John, thank you so much for calling.

Yeah, thank you also.

I guess, you know, how to say that in Tagalog, you would say salamat, which, fascinatingly enough, I guess is derived from Arabic, when you say assalamu alaikum, salam, meaning peace.

Which you could spend hours again talking about language, etymology, and all that stuff.

So that’s how you would say it in my language.

Oh, wonderful.

And what would we say in return?

You would say salamat also.

Yeah, you’d say salamat.

Salamat.

Thank you very much, Sean.

Yeah, salamat also.

Awesome.

Thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

Take care, you guys.

Take care.

John, thank you.

You’re welcome.

Bye-bye.

We’ll put a link to that book on the website so people know where to go for the resources.

Yeah, and I was going to say that if you want a less academic take on that kind of thing, and Richard Rodriguez’s book, Hunger of Memory, about growing up in this country in California as a first generation son of Mexican immigrants is really wonderful.

It really gives you a sensuous feeling for what it’s like to speak Spanish at home and English outside of the home.

I do feel like I need to say something very clearly, though, that maybe didn’t come all the way through, which is there isn’t necessarily anything inherent in a language that makes it more loving or harsher or more direct or more indirect than another language.

It’s the associations.

It’s mostly the associations and how much each individual speaker knows of that language.

Yes, and how you learned it.

And how you learned it.

Yeah.

I’d love to hear from other listeners about their experience talking and living in two languages.

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

If you think about spelling out numbers, like 1-O-N-E-2-T-W-O, how far do you have to go before you use the letter B?

I don’t know. Do you have an answer for me?

I do.

Billion?

Billion.

Wow.

How about that?

How about that?

Billions.

That’s pretty cool.

877-929-9673.

Hello.

You have a wait with words.

Hey there.

This is Bo calling from Huntsville, Alabama.

How are you?

Excellent.

Welcome to the show.

Hi, Bo.

What’s up?

How are you?

I’m a physical therapist in Huntsville, Alabama.

When I was a student about six years ago, my clinical instructor warned me in rural northeast Georgia.

She said, so you’re going to get this question.

You’re going to get patients that say this.

They’re going to say, I got a risin in my leader.

And when they say that, it means a hamstring cramp.

And I thought she was crazy.

And I kid you not, like this second patient we saw started locking up in their hamstring after a total knee replacement.

And they said, I’m a leader, my leader. It’s risin. I got a risin in my leader.

And I have been super curious ever since to know where that came from because I hear it in rural North Alabama, just like I heard it there. I hear it about once every 10 patients, I’ll catch it. Some patients know what I’m talking about. Some have no idea and they don’t even know where it came from, but I’m curious.

And Bo, how do you think they’re spelling leader?

Yeah, that’s a good question. So my colleagues and I were talking about it and we were like, maybe it’s like lederhosen or something like that. So some sort of a German background. I don’t know if it’s leader, like leader of soda or water or if it’s leader like L-E-A-D-E-R. My first impression would be like L-I-T-E-R or L-E-I, something like that. I’m terrible at spelling anyway, though.

Oh, this is so wonderful.

Yeah, the word that they’re using is leader, L-E-A-D-E-R. And it’s an old word that means a sinew or a tendon.

It’s also interesting that they use the word risin. Have you heard risin in relation to any other ailment?

Yeah, some patients will say it’s kind of rising up on them. So like they’re usually talking about a muscle, but they say it’s kind of rising up on me when I turn my head. And I figured I understood what that meant. But yeah, rising, like rising, but without the G, the N at the end.

Right, right.

And a rising, it means swelling. Like you might have a rising on your finger or something. So if you’ve got a risin in your leader, your sinews or your tendons, then, yeah, I can see how that would be a swelling that causes a cramp.

Do people ever say that they pulled a leader just to mean that they’ve got a sore muscle?

They do call it a leader separately sometimes from risin. They’ll just say, my leader hurts. But they’re always talking about their hamstring. I’ve never heard it talked about with the forearm or the shoulder or the neck.

That’s interesting.

I thought that was interesting.

Yeah, you will find the word leader in medical dictionaries from the turn of the last century.

Oh, you find it going back to the 1700s.

Oh, really?

Yeah, yeah. Medical dictionaries. Medical dictionaries, a variety of different texts and stuff.

Yeah, they don’t teach us that in school.

Well, that’s why we exist.

But there’s one theory that I really love about why it’s a leader, and it may have something to do with either ropes or with roots or plants. For example, one of the pieces of jargon in the plant world is the leader is the main stalk or branch or trunk or root around which all the other ones kind of attach or appear or are secondary to it.

So that’s a leader.

But also in ropes, when you’re learning how to tie ropes, they will talk about the leader. And this is the one that’s going in, around, and through in order to create a particular knot.

Interesting.

Yeah, and the other idea that informs that, I think, is the fact that sometimes the word guider is used in the same way.

As a leader.

To mean a leader.

Yeah, so you think of somebody like using a rope to guide an animal or something.

Could be.

All right. Perfect.

But you know what? I bet you hear other great medical vocabulary there in that area, and I would love it if you call us again sometime with more.

Sure will do.

Okay.

Thanks, Beau. Take care.

Thanks, guys.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Yeah, the editors of the Dictionary of American Regional English did surveys where they went around the country, recorded people, and they asked them a lot of questions about ailments, things that are wrong with the body.

And this is one of the answers that came up.

But one of the other ones that people might be more familiar with is diabetes called the sugar.

The sugar.

I’ve got the sugar.

And if a doctor starts a new practice in a place where they don’t speak the local English dialect, they might be befuddled at first trying to figure out what a patient.

Yeah, I was diagnosed with the sugar and I need my medicine.

877-929-9673.

Hello. Welcome to A Way with Words.

Hi. My name is Katie Hooper. I’m calling from Dallas, Texas.

Hi, Katie. Welcome to the show.

Hi, Katie.

What’s up?

So my question has to do with the words caregiver and caretaker.

And I’ve noticed that I tend to use them interchangeably, but then we think of the words giver and taker as opposite.

So it’s interesting to me that caregiver and caretaker would mean the same thing.

So I guess my question is, do they actually mean the same thing or are there times when one is the right one to use?

Yeah, I think for a lot of people, the term caretaker is more like somebody who’s hired to take care of property or something.

Like a place instead of a person.

Yeah, like a janitor or a groundskeeper.

Caretaker is the older word. Caregiver really took off in this country in the 1960s.

And in Britain, you often hear carer instead of caretaker or caregiver.

But caregiver is the later word.

And I do associate that much more with looking after a person, whether it’s a child or an ailing parent or something like that.

Okay.

That’s interesting.

So caregiver for a person and then caretaker more for like a property or a house or something like that.

At least in this country.

That’s how it’s come down.

But it wasn’t always the case.

Caretaker used to be the primary term.

Because, what, 1960s for caregiver?

It’s not.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then it really took off.

Yeah.

But I would be interested to know what your colleagues think about that.

Okay.

Well, I’ll ask around, but I will go with caregiver for people from now on.

Yeah, yeah.

I think it’s just more personal, but that’s kind of a gut feeling I have.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for your call, Katie.

We really appreciate it.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

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

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

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

We had a conversation not long ago about gramograms, which are a kind of rebus that uses only letters.

So, for example, if you want to indicate the word empty on a vat, if it’s empty, you can just write the letters M-T.

We heard from a listener who actually does that in his work.

And we heard from a lot of other listeners who use those kinds of things in different ways.

For example, Robert Krecklow of Arlington, Texas, called us to say that he’s a high school theater teacher and that stage managers have to record a lot of data like sound cues and light cues and where actors enter and exit.

And when you’re writing in the script, you just use the letter Q instead of the word C-U-E.

Of course, sure.

Just quickly use the letter Q, which is super cool because our word Q, meaning a prompt, C-U-E, comes from the Latin quando, Q-U-A-N-D-O, which means when.

And then we heard from Tim Healy, who is in the plumbing business, and he pointed out that pipes that are shaped like the letter Y are actually called Y pipes spelled W-Y-E, which is super cool.

You Google Y-W-Y-E and you’ll see all these pipes that are shaped like the letter Y.

And one more example, you know the term bill of materials?

It’s a list of materials that are required by a contractor to complete a contract or a list of all the raw parts and intermediates and subassemblies.

It’s called a bill of materials.

The acronym for it is B-O-M, pronounced BOM.

Well, we heard from Vince in Virginia who works in a shipyard that refuels nuclear carriers and submarines.

And he says he works in the materials section.

And so on a daily basis, he’s making nuclear bombs.

And they also, when you’re talking about a bill of materials, you can explode that bill of materials, which means you list everything.

Yeah, you break it out.

Yeah, and distribute it to the people who are going to be using the different parts.

So he’s not only making nuclear bombs, but he’s exploding them on a regular basis.

Vince, be careful out there.

Well, we know you’ve got weird language in your work.

Just humdrum stuff that seems exciting to you.

Share it all with us, 877-929-9673.

Or tell us about it on Twitter @wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Yeah, hi.

This is Tim from Arlington, Texas.

And I’m curious about the origin of the term camp or campy, as in like camp cinema.

Because whenever I hear, you know, cinema or theater described like this, you know, I picture in my mind like people around a campfire maybe telling ridiculous stories.

And so, yeah, I’m curious how this came to be a descriptor of that sort of thing.

And what would you give as an example of that sort of thing?

What would you describe as campy?

Well, to me, I guess, you know, I picture, you know, actors who are maybe hamming it up a little bit, maybe not entirely serious, not exactly the most highbrow sort of cinema or theater.

Right.

Okay, makes a lot of sense.

Yeah, yeah. Long history.

I’m going to trace it backward from the meaning that we have today, which is roughly what you’ve said.

Dictionaries would probably say campy usually is a lot of overacting and perhaps an element of humor because of the overacting.

Sometimes the campiness or the camp comes from ridiculous set decorations or just the whole premise is ridiculous, even if the acting is utterly normal and ordinary.

Right.

But before that, let’s take it back to by the time it appeared in the entertainment business in the 1950s, it had a notion of homosexuality.

It was connected to the idea of exaggerated gayness and almost always meant male gayness or male homosexuality.

Okay, interesting.

And when it first appears in print, and I’m going to asterisk this and come back to it in a second, in the early 1900s, that’s exactly what it was.

It was about stereotypical male homosexual behavior, just like really kind of playing it up.

That asterisk is it’s probably much older than the early 1900s.

Most words appear in mouths and ears before they appear in print.

With slang, we know that they’re even older than just regular words.

And with taboo words or words having to do with taboo culture like anything from gay culture at the time, those are probably even older.

So I would not be surprised to find that camp or campy in this way probably easily comes from, you know, 1880s or 1870s or even earlier than that.

So that said, why camp is in there, we don’t really know.

There’s a bunch of bad theories, but the one that has the most validity, most slang lexicographers could kind of get behind is it might come from a French verb, Tecumpe, which means to kind of camp out on a spot in a really dominating way, like a fierce, strong way.

And it’s something you take control of the place and you do it in maybe a military fashion, not necessarily in a, have nothing whatsoever to do with the theater or any kind of entertainment culture.

Kind of striking a pose.

Being provocative, like owning a place.

Sure.

Sure.

Wow.

Okay.

Yeah.

And it really became popularized in modern culture with Susan Sontag’s essay from 1960.

On photography?

No, it’s called Notes on Camp.

And she sort of brings it out of gay culture because for a long time it was kind of like private code almost.

Before that, you could see signs in New York City in gay establishments that said, are you going to the beach this summer or are you going to camp?

A little play on words there.

Okay. Very interesting.

Yeah, I had no idea it had any association with this kind of culture, especially as often as you hear the term, no idea whatsoever.

This is a really far field of language.

But if you read about how gay people used to identify each other before gayness was as accepted as it is today, what’s really interesting is that some people believe that camp came out of that, that you might exaggerate certain behaviors that were not seen as heterosexual in order to send a really strong signal to anyone in the area that you were gay and you might be open to meeting.

We call that dropping a hairpin.

Very cool. Very cool. Okay, great.

Thanks, Tim. We really appreciate it.

Yeah, thanks for calling.

Thank you.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

We talk about all kinds of language on this show, and we’d love to talk with you.

So give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send your questions and email to words@waywordradio.org.

And if you just can’t wait, we have a very active Facebook group.

I have been reading up on dueling.

You can imagine why.

Dueling.

D-U-E-L-I-N-G.

Dueling.

Yes.

Yes.

Like the most famous duel in American history.

Do you need me to be your second?

Is that why you’ve been researching this?

No, I don’t need you to be my second.

But I found a super cool word involving dueling, which, of course, I was inspired to read about because of Hamilton.

Gotcha.

The word delope.

D-E-L-O-P-E.

Delope.

Delope.

It’s the act of throwing away your shot.

Oh, I’m not throwing away my shot.

Right.

Right.

That term is dilope.

I didn’t know that.

How about that?

That’s cool.

And what else did you find out about dueling?

Well, I was looking at the art of dueling from 1836, which says, sometimes a man is placed in a situation when he considers it his duty to dilope, or fire in the air.

Gotcha.

Yeah, dueling is dumb and immature is what it is.

But there’s a reason we don’t do it anymore, Martha.

Are you hanging out with different people than I am?

I am not.

Do you know in Kentucky, if you are elected to public office, you have to swear that you’ve never fought in a duel?

You still have to do that.

Really?

Yes.

Like before or after the swearing in?

I forget.

Before.

That’s interesting.

And what counts as a duel?

Like with guns?

Like fighting in the playground behind the jungle gym?

Does that count?

I guess it could be licorice sticks.

I don’t know.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Beverly.

Hey, Beverly, where are you calling us from?

Richmond, Virginia.

All right.

Hi, Beverly, welcome to the show.

How can we help?

Well, I have been aware recently of hearing the term gentleman used in some sort of strange context, primarily with reference to like a perpetrator of a heinous act of some sort.

And it’s usually law enforcement personnel giving a report or local news people or sometimes even the victims.

For example, there was one that said that a gentleman wearing a ski mask held up a convenience store.

Another one was a gentleman exposed himself to a group of young girls.

And that’s just not been my idea of what a gentleman is, and I’m just curious about why they choose to use that term.

Yeah, you sort of picture a guy in a tie and tails.

Top hat.

Exactly.

Top hat and a ski mask.

Yeah, I’ve seen this so many times, and it’s the kind of thing that people can’t stop themselves from doing, apparently.

My dad, by the way, was a cop for a long time, and I know that cop voice that you’re talking about, that way where they go for this elevated language to make it sound official or important, and they don’t quite get there.

And I think that’s a lot of what’s happening there is if you say there was this dude, you know, it’s not quite as the same as saying there was this gentleman.

And we don’t mean the top hat and tails guy, right?

Yeah.

Gentleman has so many, like just like lady.

It has all these variations.

Yeah.

I mean, I’m with you, Beverly.

I think it’s sort of self-conscious and performative.

Yeah, that’s what I was saying.

More really generous, I think.

Well, I think what’s losing out here is they realize that it’s a heinous act, as you put it, Beverly, right?

Like I can find examples about a guy who flashed knives in a hospital and one of the other patients says, I don’t know what was going through the gentleman’s mind.

And you’re like, well, he had knives.

But the thing is there’s the other gentleman, which is kind of the default word you use for somebody.

It’s kind of like guy, although most cases you could say man.

But again, you have people like Martha said.

They’re performing.

They’re on the spot.

They’re talking to a reporter, right?

They’re aware that their words are going to be heard and judged.

And they’re looking for more elevated language to sound important.

Yeah, Beverly, what would you rather hear them say besides gentlemen?

Man.

I’m with you.

Is that why it bothers you?

Well, I guess it really bothers me because the conduct that is in question just is not the conduct of a gentleman.

Exactly.

It’s not.

It’s just not.

They have not earned it, right?

And I’m sure that the term gentleman at one point had denoted a social status. But, you know, I don’t think it necessarily does that anymore.

But it does, in my opinion, denote a conduct or behavior of a certain higher level than what’s allegedly been done.

I don’t think you’re the only one that’s noticed this.

And whether or not people are conscious of it or not, what you will often find when people mean the definitive gentleman that you’re talking about, the nice guys, they will add real or true in front of the word.

They’ll say he was a real gentleman or he is a true gentleman.

And this way they distinguish from the kind of throwaway gentleman word that just means guy or man or dude.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, and it does seem like it’s kind of become a generic term for a male person.

Right, exactly right. It’s called semantic bleaching, where the original kind of very specific sense is kind of withered down or narrowed down or winnowed down into something basic.

So Beverly, you’re not alone.

Well, good.

Thank you very much for your call. We really appreciate it.

Certainly, certainly.

Take care.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

What turn of phrase has caught your ear? We’d love to hear about it.

Call us 877-929-9673 or send your email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Heather Lopez from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Hey, Heather, what’s going on?

What’s up?

So I was calling to ask about a saying, dodo.

So I am from Colorado and I grew up in New Mexico.

And my husband and his family, they’re from Louisiana.

Whenever I tell my little ones to go, we say, let’s go night-night.

My mother-in-law says, let’s go dodo.

So I was wondering where the saying, let’s go dodo, comes from.

So is that a little bit of a culture shock for you to go from Colorado to Louisiana and get all that new language?

Yes, yes. It has definitely been very interesting.

My husband’s had to kind of coach me on last names because it’s very French.

And so I’ve had to learn a lot of new names and sayings here.

Cool.

Dodo is a really great one because it’s got a long history in French and a long history where it meets English.

Do you know any French at all?

No, I don’t.

I do not.

Okay, that’s fine.

But a lot of the people who studied French or were listening to the show now are going, oh, yes, I know what he’s going to say.

I’m going to talk about the French verb for to sleep.

It’s dormir, D-O-R-M-I-R, very similar to the Spanish verb for to sleep.

And English dormitory, the place where you sleep.

There we go.

Oh, okay.

So dodo comes from dormir, and it basically is a baby talk.

It’s very exactly like night-night or other reduplicated baby talk words that we have in English, like choo-choo or wee-wee or poo-poo.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye, those sorts of things.

And it goes back to the 15th century in French.

And so what you’re hearing is this remnant of Acadian French in Louisiana showing up in English.

That and some other expressions in Louisiana are so entrenched that it will probably last 100 or 200 more years.

It’s just it’s absolutely a part of the culture down there and part of the language.

Absolutely. And then they say fait-o-do.

Yeah.

And so it’s like a dance.

So whenever the parents are out all night participating in activity, then they say that there’s a room for the babies to go in.

So that’s the way the parents can go long into the night without having to leave and the children can go to sleep in the room.

So that’s from the French word to do or to make.

Faire dodo, faire dormir, means to go to sleep.

Oh, okay. Awesome.

So anyway, it’s really cool.

And I have something for you, a recommended book, which will help you get ahead of this and kind of get ahead on it.

Oh, yes, I would love that.

It’s a wonderful book.

It’s the Dictionary of Louisiana French, published by the University Press of Mississippi.

It’s not amateurish.

It’s very professionally done.

And it totally covers a lot of the stuff that you’re going to encounter in your new life in Louisiana.

Oh, that’s fantastic.

I would love to read that.

Yeah, check it out.

Perfect.

Well, thank you, guys.

Thank you, Heather.

Thanks for calling.

Okay, bye-bye.

In French, there’s also, this is more common in France where the metro is more of a thing.

But they have the saying, metro, boulot, dodo, which is kind of like expresses the humdrumness of ordinary life.

You ride the metro, you go to your job, you go to sleep, repeat.

Metro, bolo, todo.

Is that how they translated the title of Groundhog Day, the movie?

Oh, they may have.

That should be a great example of it, yeah.

877-929-9673.

I always love it when friends use words I don’t know and then I have to go running to the dictionary.

And a friend of mine the other day was talking about how, oh, I was just crexing about something.

Crexing?

Yes.

Do you know this term?

K-R-E-X.

It means to complain or grumble.

And it’s related to a Yiddish word that means to complain or grumble.

Oh, interesting.

Crexing.

The baby’s crexing.

Okay.

Nice.

Hit us up on Twitter, W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

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

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

This program would not be possible without you.

Grant and I are out to change the way we listen and think about language,

And you’re making it happen.

Thanks also to senior producer Stefanie Levine,

Director and editor Tim Felten,

Director Colin Tedeschi,

And production assistant Emma Kelman in San Diego.

In New York, we thank quiz guide John Chaneski

And that master of keeping it real, Paul Ruist at Argo Studios.

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

From the Recording Arts Center at Studio West in San Diego,

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

So long.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.