Discussion Forum (Archived)
Guest
In this week's episode, Martha and Grant discuss not-to-be-believed articles about language from the satirical newspaper The Onion, including one headlined Underfunded Schools Forced to Cut Past Tense from Language Programs.
By the way, did you ever notice how "ONION" is ZO-ZO if you tilt your head to the right?
Read the original blog post and listen to this episode.
A caller has a friendly disagreement with a pal: Is the expression “tide me over” or “tie me over”? Hint: The answer she gets should tide her over.
If a dictator dictates, and an aviator aviates, then does a commentator “commentate”? A caller complains that this last word gives him the willies. Does an alligator alligate?
A middle-schooler who's reading Anne of Green Gables is puzzled by a mention of “breakfast, dinner, and supper.” She wants to know if the words “dinner” and “lunch” really interchangeable.
The fur flies when Greg Pliska unleashes a word puzzle involving the names of animals.
Also speaking of animals, an immigrant from India recounts his confusion the first time he heard the expression “I'm going to go see a man about a horse.” How in did that become a euphemism for “I'm going to go to the bathroom”?
A former West Virginian reports that she grew up hearing a strange word: “charny.” In her part of the country, she says, it means “dirty” or “filthy,” and she always heard it pronounced “chee-YAR-nee.”
This week's Slang This! contestant, a comic-book illustrator from Providence, R.I., tries to guess the meaning of the expressions “hat-catcher” and “to go shucks.”
What IS the longest word in the English language? “Antidisestablishmentarianism”? “Floccinaucinihilipilification”? Or “pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis,” maybe? Martha and Grant discuss such sesquipedalian contenders for the title of Longest English Word. Here's that list of long words that Martha mentioned, from AskOxford.com.
Where do you put those exclamation points and question marks—do they go inside or outside the quotation marks? Can you say, “We have the answer!”?
Confused about whether “biweekly” means “twice a week” or “twice a month”? Martha rants about why the using the words “biweekly” and “bimonthly” at all is a bad idea, period.
Grant shares listener email about the origin and meaning of the term “g-job.”
Onion stories we like:
Copy Editor's Revenge Takes Form Of Unhyphenated Word
Our Street Gangs Are Probably Using Bad Language
Someday, I Will Copyedit The Great American Novel
Nation's Educators Alarmed By Poorly Written Teen Suicide Notes
To the young woman confused by supper and dinner:
Life on the farm is NOT kinda laid back, especially when it's time to make hay while the sun shines.
Dinner is the MAIN meal of the day. For city people this is most likely the evening meal; "abendessen" in German. For farm people, in the day of labor intensive farming, Dinner was the noon meal. Dinner preparation began at the same time as breakfast, if not before. The yeast had to be proofed so the bread could be made. Dinner usually featured several kinds of pies and cake as well as several meats, vegetables (fresh from the garden), lots o carbs - potatoes, noodles, breads - and was a long break from the morning's hard labor.
Lunch was served around 4, similar to what we think of as British tea. Lunch was freqently sandwiches from the meats left from Dinner, more sweets, and lots of liquids. This was the break and sustenance to carry the workers through until the end of the work day.
After the evening chores are finished and it's time to sit down for the day comes supper. Supper is a light meal. More than leftovers, it is not as heavy or involved as Dinner. Thus the references to Breakfast, Dinner, and Supper. I had to make the adjustment from the city meal schedule to the farm schedule, and the easiest way to explain the difference between supper and Dinner is that Dinner is the main meal of the day, and supper is a light meal. The distinction may be lost these days.
“onion” is ZO-ZO if you tilt your head to the right?
Not really but "ONION" is with the right font. (I know, picky, picky!)
I thought the response to the Green Gables dinner question was a bit lacking. Don't either of you know that dinner has often been the name for the big meal of the day? I usually eat brf, lunch, and dinner but farmers, like the GG folk, had their dinner in the middle of the day and a light supper before bed.
Mary Clare
Well, it's not that simple, Beatrice and Mary Clare. As we said on the show, the usage varies greatly. My father's people were farmers. I lived on a farm as a boy. Your description of farmers' usage of "dinner" and "supper" doesn't jibe with our usage of it. Dinner, the last meal of the day for us, was also our biggest meal of the day--but not because we were differentiating it from "supper," a word which was interchangeable for "dinner."
In any case, in traditional farm life back in the day (perhaps in that fantastical never-was farm life that American mythologizing says is the core of our history), I believe breakfast was the big meal of the day. First you feed the animals and milk the cows—farm animals always come first, because tending them is like tending money—and when you come in from the morning chores, you eat a huge breakfast. The mid-day meal was a smallish affair brought out to where you were working (because you can't have people taking naps in the middle of the day after a big meal) and supper at the table could be early or late, depending on the time of the year, whether there was company, and habit.
Re dinner vs. lunch vs. supper. I wonder if the confusion has something to do with the wonders of English. There are many nuances in our language that derive from Anglo Saxon vs. Latin/French influences. Supper seems to be an Anglo Saxon term for the evening meal, probably involving soup. Dinner probably comes from the Latin/ French - to dine is "diner" in French, "cenar" in Spanish. In most Norman vs. Anglio Saxon terms, the French form was used by the gentry, while the AS form was for the peasant. I suggest that lunch is more of a peasant meal, while dinner is more of a china/silver sit-down affair that has transcended class distinction over the centuries. Supper is the late meal, which could also be a dinner - though in Europe it still is more of a bread and soup affair later in the evening.
Yes, in my grandmother's day, the noon meal was carried to the workers in the fields. She told a story about hay season when, as a young girl (born in the early 1890's) her duty was to watch the horses, attached to a tripod arrangement which lifted the hay, while the workers ate. Of course, a young girl's attention will wander, as will unattended horses, and over the tripod went.
As someone who has helped prepare the meals during hay season late mid-20th century, breakfast was hearty, but certainly not the spread that was served at noon.
Martha, is it regional usage?
I was listening to the Grant and Martha name some popular euphemisms having to pee, and thought I would drop my two cents. I have been in the navy for a grip of years and now use the term "check bilges".
I derived this term from boot camp, though it took awhile to affix itself upon my lexicon. After chow our company was given a short amount of time to use the restroom, always seemed a bit too short of time. The Company Commander would announce to us that all 75 people had 10 minutes to "Pump and Dump", and this alludes to a vessel once outside a certain distance from land the ship will pump bilges and dump garbage.
I have to say I am LOVING all these reminiscences about dinner and supper, both in this thread and the few comments here.
And Beatrice, Grant's done more research on the regional differences than I have, but I've learned from him that there do indeed seem to be parts of the country where one is more prevalent than the other.
I also have to say that this thread was making me hungry. That is, until I read Wayne's post about "checking bilges"! 🙂
Great stuff, Wayne! We always love hearing these firsthand reports from a particular group's slang and jargon -- the military, in this case. And btw, Wayne, I've never heard anyone say "for a grip of years." Is that your own phrase, or did I just somehow miss it before now?
Hi, I was on my way to the library this afternoon and I heard your discussion about the longest word and Grant mentioned psuedopsuedohypoparathyroidism. Well, I wanted to offer some help in what it means real quick, psuedohypoparathydroidism is a disease that is a dysregulation of feedback mechanisms on the function of the parathyroid that would give symptoms as if the parathyroid were enlarged. But it's not, hence the "psuedo." Psuedohypoparathyroidism is actually more common than hypoparathyroidism and it's easily recognized by doctors and treated. I wouldn't put it past the medical profession to name ACTUAL hypoparathyroidism "psuedopsuedohypoparathyroidism," but it probably is a disease characterized by the same symptoms but different cause.
At any rate, I had an inner chuckle when you mentioned biochemistry and biochemical names because it brought me back to biochemistry classes learning about proteins and metabolic regulation and gene transcription.
One of the funniest examples, and you see lots of research published on this protein, and it's importance for regulating cell functions is this protein: CREB-BP (we just say "creb-b-p.". It literally stands for CREB-Binding Protein. CREB is CRE-Binding Protein. CRE (and we sometimes pronounce is "cree") is Cyclic AMP Responsive Element, and Cyclic AMP is cyclic adenine monophosphate.
So CREB-BP is cyclic adenine monophosphate responsive element binding protein binding protein. A protein that binds a protein that binds an element of dna in response to cyclicAMP.
Another funny example is on a biochemistry exam in undergrad, I got an answer wrong because I wrote, "Adenyl cyclase." The professor was looking for "Adenylate cyclase." I looked it up in the book, and the protein referred to in the question is listed as "adenyl," and in his class notes, the professor wrote "adynlate." They really are the same physical thing, but different way of calling it. Since I had already gotten into grad school at that point, I let esteemed professor think that he really showed me and I didn't question it to get my two-points back on the exam.
Finally, there's a protein that synthesizes glycogen. It's called glycogen synthase (makes sense, right?). It's function is modified by an enzyme that adds phosphate to it called glycogen synthase kinase. THAT protein in turn is regulated by another enzyme called Glycogen Synthase Kinase Kinase. I think they teach us about this on the first day of biochemistry scare us.
Examples like these are all over biochemistry and medicine, and we to name things descriptively and it is sometimes creative ... or not. For example, a professor calling an element of DNA that responds to guanine, "Let's call it the G-Spot," and the class snickers.
I just wanted to share some of these examples with you ... biochemists can sometimes have a way with words.
Thanks,
Erick
(San Diego)
Yes, I was surprised that they did not mention that dinner is the big meal of the day, regardless of when it is served, and that it is not just calling lunch dinner. I also remember a Sherlock Holmes story where they are hot on the trail of something and Holmes says to Watson "... then let's turn our dinner into a supper", meaning something lighter and faster so that they could be on their way.
I am so glad you brought up this euphemism. I had never heard this until I was in my twenties. I first heard it from my boss who was a recent immigrant from Ireland. In fact from county Cork near Limerick. I was glad to hear you reinforce the notion that the expression comes from Ireland. Though I guess it doesn't really matter other than when you hear, “I'm going to see a man about a horse” or the even more common “I need to see a man about a horse” you hear a very lilting rapid fire phrase “see a man about a horse”.
When you pointed out that there was an older saying about a dog, it only reinforces the argument that it is the rhythm of the phrase that is important. It is a pity when you read these words, you cannot hear them spoken. It is like reading Oscar Wilde aloud. It is better done with a Limerick accent.
I disagree with Grant on the ambiguity of semi-weekly. "Semi-" is used a lot these days just to mean "sort of," but strictly speaking it means half, and I think this still standard enough that anyone but a pedant would realize that semiweekly means once every half week, just as a semicircle is precisely half of a circle.
I heard an excellent lunch/dinner explanation on the PBS series "Manor House", which was a modern-day re-enactment of life in the Edwardian Period. The main meal (dinner) for the serving staff was at noon, while the lord and lady of the manor ate a lighter meal, or supper, at that hour.
Their large meal (dinner) was in the early evening, and the servants ate a lighter meal (supper) around that time of day.
Since watching that show, I have wondered if a particular family's use of these terms has more to do with the occupations of their ancestors than where they live today.
Hi Martha and Grant,
Hi there! It's your old friend Mark Shainblum from Montreal, Canada, of "postalgia" and Slang It infamy. I hope you're doing well.
I just listened to the latest episode on podcast (as a podcast? in podcast form? English can't keep up with technology...) and was also struck by the young lady's confusion about the use of "dinner" and "supper" in Anne of Green Gables.
Just to respond to Martha's musing about whether the term was a specifically Canadian usage, the answer is no. As in the U.S., it seems to be a regional or class-based thing here too, with the English/French linguistic divide thrown in for good measure. Over the years I've noticed that even English-speaking people from different neighbourhoods in Montreal will use "dinner" or "lunch" for the noontime meal, though "lunch" is by far the more common, say 95% more common. The use of "dinner" for noon time meal was probably much more common in the early 1900's, when Anne of Green Gables was written, and the English spoken in Lucy Maud Montgomery's home province of Prince Edward Island (and in the Maritimes in general) has always been rich in dialect and archaisms.
What's also really interesting is that Quebec French has gone in exactly the opposite direction. In pure, Academie francaise-approved French, "Petit dejeuner" is breakfast, "Dejeuner" is lunch, and "diner" (dinner) or "souper" (supper) are the evening meals. In Quebec, most people call breakfast "dejeuner," dropping the "petit" entirely, lunch is "diner" and the evening meal is "souper." Surprisingly, the English word "lunch" is also used, but not as the name of a specific meal; rather, it means a snack. That use is so entrenched that there's even a local brand of cookie called "Lunch," a name I never understood until a French-speaking friend explained it to me. So, when speaking English, French-Canadians will also often call the noon time meal "dinner," and will say "Let's have some lunch," when they feel like having cake and coffee at 11:00 pm.
Wikipedia also has a great article on the origin of the word "lunch" and "dinner" and the meals they describe at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunch.
The "go shucks" quiz reminded me of some scrubs that we have at the hospital where I sometimes work. They are called "MRI Scrubs" and are a different color than the usual ones we use. I asked a nurse what the difference is. She said they have no pockets. That way people don't inadvertently bring metallic objects into the MRI rooms.
Due to the intense and rapidly-changing magnetic fields, ferrous metals can be thrown around, and other things like rings can have electric currents induced in them causing them to heat up.
Re "charney" or maybe czarny
The ear is a wondrous thing. When the lady from West Virginia called about the word meaning dirty I heard/ imagined czarny. That is Polish for black - and my grandmother used an expression nie czarny - not black meaning she had cleaned the house.
My brain made the following trip: czarny= black = sooty = coal
Many Polish immigrants wound up working in coal mines in Pennsylvania, like my grandfather or West Virginia, like his cousin.
This may be a pseudo attribution, but I thought I would share it. English, after all has a habit of blending in foreign words...
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
1 Guest(s)