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Sure, there's Grandma and Grampa, but there's also Gammy, Bumpy, Dadoo, Gre-Gre, Kiki, Kerkel, Monga, Nee-Nee, Pots, Rah-Rah and Woo-Woo. Martha and Grant talk about the endlessly inventive names grandchildren call their grandparents. They also discuss Seinfeldisms, couch potatoes, and where in the world your car can and will be stopped by robots. Really!
This episode first aired March 21, 2009. Listen here:
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What do people call their grandparents? Well, the readers of the The Advocate in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, know.
You've heard people describe something momentous as "a watershed moment in history." What is a watershed, exactly? Besides an Indigo Girls' song, that is.
In Ireland you'll find that some folks have an odd habit of gasping in mid-conversation. A Texan who lived in Dublin for years says he found this speech trait disconcerting. The hosts explain that this "pulmonic ingressive" is heard other places around the world. More about ingressives here, including examples in audio clips from Sweden and Scotland.
Martha shares listener email about what to call that icy buildup in your car's wheel wells. Fenderbergs, anyone?
Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a puzzle called "Wordrows," a.k.a. "Welded Palindromes." They're two-word palindromes, in other words. For example, what two-word palindrome means "beige bug"?
Yadda yadda yadda. Newman! No soup for you! The 1990's sitcom Seinfeld popularized these expressions and more. Check out this Paul McFedries article from Verbatim.
What's the origin of the term couch potato? Grant has the story of the guys credited with coining this term for boob-tube aficionados.
Your dining companion suddenly starts choking. Once his coughing subsides, he exclaims, "Whew! Something when down my Sunday throat!" Sunday throat? Martha explains this odd expression.
A few episodes back, Grant and Martha discussed what linguists call "creaky voice." Many of you wrote to ask for more examples of this curious speech trait. Here are a few, about halfway down the page.
In this week's installment of "Slang This!," Grant and Martha are joined by June Casagrande, author of Mortal Syntax: 101 Language Choices That Will Get you Clobbered by the Grammar Snobs -- Even If You're Right. June tries to pick out the true slang terms from a group that includes the expressions hot wings, bird farm, bellybag, and budget.
When you're late for something in Johannesburg, you can always say you were held up by robots and no one will think twice. That's because in South Africa, a robot is a traffic light. Check out this haunting video called "Death of a Robot." The hosts discuss this and other terms for those helpful semaphores.
What's the best style guide for online writing?
In William Howitt's Madam Dorrington of the Dene, a character named Vincent says, "Don't let my father be fearful of me. I will be as ravenously ambitious, and as gigantically work-brickle [...] as he can desire." Grant has the goods on the dialect expression work-brittle or work brickle, which means "energetic" or "industrious."
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>>>>That would give Martha her well deserved extra respect points….
Oh goody! I need all the extra respect points I can get!
Honestly, I thought the song had to do with weasel brainivores, but I've sent an email to the friend I thought mentioned the song to me.
I do think Zappa was a genius, FWIW. And thank you for that graphic, Stoppel!
I never knew the name for it, but I first encountered ingressives in France, when I heard people using the word oui (yes) while breathing in. In most cases, it seemed like the "uh-huh" or "yeah" people use softly as affirmation when someone is speaking to them. But sometimes it was a full-out response.
The first few times I heard it, I thought the person was in pain. I quickly dismissed the idea of pain. Had I been the speaker at the time, the idea of pain would have been much more plausible.
Some years before Seinfeld made "no soup for you!" a catchphrase, there was another expression with similar application: "bad dog! no biscuit!" At least that's the first version I heard. "Biscuit" in this context suggests a British origin.
(I've been thinking about Greg Pliska's "wordrows" for a while and the longest two-word example I can come up with has the definition "suffering from anxiety brought about by german-chocolate cake". Anybody?)
Ron, I think I once knew about that but it was never common in my circles. With only cursory searching, I find a use of it from 1990.
It doesn't have to be British, by the way. Americans use "dog biscuit" quite commonly, along with "dog treat," but never "dog cookie."
I've been thinking about Greg Pliska's “wordrows†for a while
Always dangerous.
and the longest two-word example I can come up with has the definition “suffering from anxiety brought about by german-chocolate cakeâ€. Anybody?)
Oy. "Coco" "nuts"? No wait -- I've forgotten the rules of that game!
While all the examples were two words of the same length, or off by one "pivot" letter, I have been thinking that maybe they don't have to be this. I thought of one not as long as dessert-stressed, but lifting that assumption might yield longer examples. My uneven example clue is "institution of targeted higher education."
Spoiler below.
Oh so many comments on the last episode:
Watershed: That clicked! In weaving (a repository for some of the oldest and unchanged words in English) the shed is the space between the “up†warp threads and the “down†warp threads, i.e. where you put the weft. (The word weft itself is an old past tense for weave, as is woof, but woof is archaic even to weavers.)
Dog biscuits: Grant, I guess you don't have a dog or know many dog people. American dog people certainly use “cookie†and “biscuit†interchangeably. My late, lamented dog Cookie was a retired show dog, and when she was on the show circuit, her call name was Cherry, so that calling her wouldn't set off the other dogs.
Pulmonic ingressive: My family has many Irish immigrants, and all of them, male or female, have used the pulmonic ingressive as an acknowledgment that the speaker was heard. Personally, I prefer it to “uh-huh†🙂
I don't have a dog, but we had them growing up and my evidence comes from examining more than a trillion words of text. "Dog cookie" meaning "a food treat for a dog" and not "a dog-shaped cookie meant to be eaten by a human" is outnumbered by "dog biscuit" by a ratio of more than 1000 to 1 in American usage.
I don't have a dog, but we had them growing up and my evidence comes from examining more than a trillion words of text. “Dog cookie†meaning “a food treat for a dog†and not “a dog-shaped cookie meant to be eaten by a human†is outnumbered by “dog biscuit†by a ratio of more than 1000 to 1 in American usage.
Ooh, a trillion words of text. That might mean something if people communicated with their canines in writing instead of saying "do you want a cookie" to them.
And a 1000:1 ratio is not "never" as in your comment above, particularly with "a trillion" in the mix.
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