Endless Summer (episode #1623)

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 Grant, we asked our listeners for funny street names that they know of,

And boy, did they respond. Oh boy, howdy, did they. Martha, you and I have a lot of trips to make.

A lot of selfies to take under street signs, clearly. If you look at the map with all the

Pins in it, it looks like it needs an acne cream. There are pimples all over the place.

There are a lot of destinations, and these are funny.

This is some funny stuff.

Yeah, I think our first stop should be Tallahassee.

Scott Higbee wrote from Tallahassee to say that there they have both a Frankie Lane and a Lois Lane.

Oh, that’s wonderful.

Bring your comics, listen to some music.

Yeah, apparently there are Lois Lanes in Huntsville, Alabama and Southfield, Michigan as well,

And probably lots of other places.

Larry Johnson wrote,

Many years I lived in Batesville, Arkansas, where there was an intersection of Gwyn and Barrett.

Oh, yeah. People always make that joke about my name.

Grant Barrett just automatically lends itself to Gwyn and Barrett. And I do.

Gerald Gordon tells us there’s an either way in Boulder Creek, California.

Imagine giving the directions to the Monty Python skit just waiting to be delivered.

Well, and speaking of way, Mary Schaefer in Newark, Delaware, found that GOA, that’s G-O-A, is often used for road names, for little short roads.

And in fact, in Lavalette, New Jersey, there is a GOA way.

Now, that’s what I want.

You know, where do you live?

GOA way.

Where’s your house?

Oh, those are really good.

Yeah, and I just can imagine the signs when they go up and somebody’s standing there smugly, hands on hips, just proudly looking at their sign and walking in the house and calling the bank saying, I need some new checks printed.

We’d still love to see the street names out your way that are just a little off kilter.

Send them to words@waywordradio.org or let us know on the telephone.

It’s toll free in the United States and Canada, 24 hours a day, 1-877-929-9673.

And we will accept them in any language.

Find lots of ways to reach us on our website at waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, Grant Martha.

This is Martin Hoffman.

I’m calling from atop Mount Helix in San Diego County.

How are you guys doing?

Oh, yeah.

I think I see you waving.

How’s it going?

Hello down there.

It’s good.

How are you guys?

All right.

All right.

What’s on your mind?

Okay.

So I’ll try to keep this brief.

So I grew up here in a small, wonderful little beach town of Point Loma in San Diego, just

Above Garbage Beach.

And I started surfing probably about the age of nine or ten.

And admittedly, I was one of those atypical SoCal surfer dudes who believed that the more surf slang I could stuff into a sentence, the more genuine and authentic of a surfer I believed I was.

Not quite as bad as Spicoli, but I was certainly up there.

You were not as Spicoli, huh?

So that’s how it takes.

All right. So what did nine-year-old you sound like?

Oh dude the a-frames are just frothing out there grant was boosting sonar today

Oh i had a feeling you guys might ask me to do that but i love it sure

But you know honestly i i could probably talk to you guys for hours for just the the litany of

Of slang and terms in the surf world i mean even how you know between different regions of

The U.S. Where I’ve traveled. They use different words to essentially say the same thing. But

In the interest of time, there is one term that I heard a while back. I’ve never heard it outside

Of the surf community. And even within the surf community, you don’t hear it too much. And the

Term is gangbusters. And I can give you some context if you’d like.

Yeah. So 1992, I was about

12 years old my best surf bro mike carvalho and i went to go see bruce brown’s the endless summer

Too and for anyone that doesn’t know that’s basically you know two guys that want to chase

Summer surf around the globe go into the different hemispheres and what was kind of interesting about

Bruce brown the filmmaker was he would narrate over the entire film and so early on in one

Of the scenes, they’re at a surf spot in Costa Rica called Ollie’s Point, and the surf is just

Perfect. There’s nobody out. And Bruce Brown says it was just gangbusters out there. And that just

Stuck with me. And like I said, I’d never heard it. And I’m just kind of wondering, you know,

At what point did gangbusters become a positive thing? And has this really been used in different

Areas? And just overall, if there was any kind of background, you could get me on that term.

Do you feel like Gangbusters is part of surf lingo or just larger lingo and slang in general?

That’s a good question, Graham, because like I said, I hadn’t heard it before watching The Endless Summer 2.

And to be honest, Bruce Brown was a legend of the surf community within the surf community.

Of course. Absolutely.

Yeah. So I’ve always thought it to be just a surf term.

But, you know, like I said, I’ve never heard it anywhere else.

Those two films are classics, even to people outside the surfing world.

We know a lot about the term gangbusters, and we actually know where it comes from and how it became popular.

So at the very beginning of the history of the word gangbusters, it was literally about busting up gangs.

Gangs meaning criminals, people who, criminal gangs, people who break the law.

And it was about cops as early as like 1904.

Cops would, gangs would form in big cities like Boston and New York and Chicago.

And cops would get this reputation as the guy to go to, to get in there and do what needed to be done,

To bust heads and disrupt these operations and destroy the structure of these organizations.

It wasn’t just about catching the guys, but it was busting up their distribution methods and destroying their know-how and destroying their facilities and all of that.

So if you busted a gang, you really got a reputation and you rose in the ranks.

And so you will find mentions as early as the 1920s of people like Lieutenant Jeremiah David of the New York Police Department as the gangbuster of the Madison Street Precinct in the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

And in the 1930s, Captain Williams, in the same precinct, was given the same moniker.

And so legends like that gave rise to popular culture.

So there was a 1931 movie called The Gangbuster about a man who gets tangled up in a gang war when he tries to rescue the kidnapped woman that he’s in love with.

So these real-life police officers show up in fiction as these larger-than-life characters.

And in 1935, a radio show called, no, it wasn’t called that.

It was called G-Men, it appeared.

And it featured FBI cases, real FBI cases from the FBI’s point of view.

It was very sympathetic to the FBI with lots of earnest drama and loud sound effects as the opener.

We’re talking screeching police whistles, wailing police sirens, a loud echoing announcer, Tommy guns, and all this stuff.

The opening kind of changed over the years.

But it was always very loud. And a year later, the show was very successful and it was renamed

Gangbusters because most of what happened in the dramas from these FBI files was busting up

These criminal gangs. And the show was a hit that lasted, I think, about 20 years,

Both in radio and television. And it coined the phrase, coming on like gangbusters,

Because when the show came on the air, it was so loud.

The whistles and the sirens and the atomic guns.

Right.

It literally came on and it just caught your attention or startled you.

So it referred to somebody who came on strong personally, like they were demanding or aggressive or pushy.

And interestingly, a lot of the early print uses of coming online gangbusters appear in black newspapers.

And a lot of the early uses have to do with going full force or playing really well in jazz.

Like going all out while you’re in the jazz clubs, you know, late at night and just like giving it your all.

So eventually, though, of course, that term strips down and becomes just anything could be like gangbusters.

Meaning by comparison or for emphasis for anything that’s exceptional or unusual.

And this leads us to Endless Summer 2, where we’re talking about amazing waves, right?

You know, these gnarly serfs.

They’re gangbusters that are just astonishing and exceptional for their kind, right?

They’re gangbusters.

That means they are just loud and big and aggressive.

They’re very demanding of your skill.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

And I love the jazz reference as well.

I can definitely hear someone saying, oh, man, he was just going gangbusters last night at the club.

Right. Yeah. So I love the fact that it’s these two subcultures for two American subcultures, kind of both of them respecting talent.

Both of them are very much, I think, about not hierarchy so much like do you have the chops?

That’s all I care about. Right. Surfing and jazz are all about the chops.

And they’re also, even if you don’t have the chop, there’s a culture, it tends to be a culture of respect.

People will give you a chance to show your chops and let you grow if you don’t yet have them.

They’ll teach and lead and guide and help you get to where you need to go.

I think there’s mostly a culture in jazz and surf of bringing people along, right?

Bringing the groms up so that they can find their feet.

Absolutely.

I was definitely one of those little grommets.

I love it.

Wonderful.

Well, I appreciate you guys taking the time and letting me know all that.

That’s really cool.

I’ll keep using the term, but I might broaden my use outside of surfing.

Yeah, you’ve got to come back to some more of that surf stuff, Martin.

Anytime.

I would love to.

All right, you guys.

Thank you so much for your time.

We really love to do it.

Keep at it.

Bye-bye.

Take care, Martin.

Bye-bye.

All right.

You too.

Bye-bye.

Well, surf on over to our website, waywordradio.org, and there are lots of ways for you to contact us.

We heard from Olivia, who lives in Tempe, Arizona, with her husband.

They were both born and raised there, but they have different terms for what happens when you eat ice cream too quickly.

She calls it a brain freeze, and he says he gets a cold headache.

And they’re wondering if there are other regional terms for this.

And indeed, there are other terms for this.

I don’t know, Grant, that there’s anything particularly regional about them,

But you can call it a cold stimulus headache or an ice cream headache.

But my favorite term for this is the medical term, which is sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia.

Sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia.

Oh, I’ve got an idea, Martha.

Ice cream for breakfast, then you get an excuse slip from your doctor,

Then you get out of work, and then more ice cream.

I love it. You’re right. I mean, who’s going to question if you say I have obina palatine ganglion neuralgia?

It sounds like a condition. And it could be chronic. You could do it every day.

True.

That sounds like a plan.

Go to our website at waywordradio.org to listen to all of our past episodes and find a zillion ways to reach us, including social media.

More about what you say and why you say it.

Stick around for more of A Way with Words.

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 climbing in the window, 12 stories up, it’s our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Hi, John.

Hi, Grant.

I’m Martha.

Well, I am rather tall.

I can just reach up and swing my way in, which I appreciate doing things differently.

It’s that upper body strength.

Yes, it’s key. It’s key.

My kid Jesse and I went to the zoo yesterday,

And we saw a cute little Madagascar primate called an aye-aye.

And aye, that gave me an idea, answers to a quiz whose only vowel sound are aye.

As in, it’s often found between two things that are maybe not so different from each other.

That would be a fine line.

You know, there’s a fine line between genius and madness, etc., etc.

And we’re going to find out about that right now, this genius and madness.

Say aye-aye, Captain, and give me the aye-aye answer to the following clues.

Typically, it’s plugged into the outlet in a kid’s room.

It might look like a bird or some other whimsical shape.

It’s a nightlight, Captain.

It’s a nightlight, yeah.

Maybe yours is shaped like a blue canary or whatever.

Okay, soldiers, we’re marching our way toward the top brass on the grandstand.

Let’s show some respect by turning our heads and looking at them as we march.

Wow, I feel like I should know this one.

That’s what you tell the soldiers to do when you want them to turn their heads and look.

Something right.

Yes.

Eyes right.

Eyes right.

Exactly.

Very nice.

That’s right.

Oh, so you think you’re pretty cheeky, huh?

I think you’re some kind of smart aleck, some kind of know-it-all, some kind of…

Some kind of wise guy.

Yeah, exactly.

You’re a wise guy.

Now, to me, it means let’s get ready to have a really nice piece of steak.

But apparently to everybody else in the TV business, it means the hours between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. or whatever.

Prime time.

Rhyme time, yes.

Very good, guys.

Those are your I, I clues, and you did just fine.

We did fine, fine?

Fine, fine.

Yes.

All right.

Bye-bye, John.

Thanks, guys.

Call us anytime to talk about language, 877-929-9673,

Or send your stories to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Kendall McDevitt calling from Boone, North Carolina.

Hey, Kendall, welcome to the show. What can we do for you?

I’m calling about a word that has been used in my family for many years.

And the word is coperosity.

And the word was used, my mother especially used it.

She was originally from out west in Colorado and Wyoming.

And she would use it with my brother and my sister and I growing up really to inquire about how we were feeling, like how was our mood?

She would often use it if we’d had a bad day the day before and we’d wake up in the morning and she’d say, hi, Kendall, how’s your coperosity this morning?

So it was like a way to ask, how are you feeling? How are you doing?

But it’s a little more nuanced than just saying, how are you or how’s your mood?

And it seemed to communicate a lot of care as well.

So anyway, I’m really curious about where this word comes from.

Is it a real word?

Is it just something our family has made up?

I don’t know.

That sounds really sweet, actually.

And it is real.

And it’s not just your family.

And it’s got a lot of history behind it.

And it plugs into a long tradition, actually, of asking how people are doing.

Oh.

Oh.

It’s a coperosity is spelled C-O-P-P-E-R-O-S-I-T-Y, but it’s a form of the word corporosity, C-O-R-P-O-R-O-S-I-T-Y, which is a fancified version of the word corpus, meaning body.

So if you’re asking someone how their corporosity or coperosity is, you’re just asking, how is your body or how are you doing?

Oh, okay.

Yeah. So we find corporosity at least as far back as 1821.

So that’s 200 years.

And sometimes in the early days, it refers specifically to a big body or a rotund body or a corpulent one.

But more often, it’s just how is your whole physical being?

How are you?

How’s your health?

What is the status of you?

One of the earliest uses we have of it in particular, not the very earliest, but one I think worth mentioning is a British newspaper in 1842 is reporting back to its readers in the UK about the strange ways of Texans.

And it writes, the usual salutation of the Texan gentleman is, how does your coperosity sedgeciate this morning?

And other conversational openers, by the way, that it suggests are a pretty considerable of a jug full of sun this morning and a tarnation of upstreet sort of day, this I calculate.

I don’t know if those would fly in Houston or Dallas these days.

How fantastic.

It’s got a really long history and tends to be used in the American South from the Carolinas and West.

And it does show up in the American West as part of the Western movement of migration,

Definitely in mining country during the different gold rushes and so forth.

And definitely moved west during the post-Civil War migration as people went out there to seek their fortunes and claim land and so forth.

Well, that’s fascinating because, of course, my mother was from out west, but I was raised actually in the south. I was raised in North Carolina. So she picked it up out west and brought it back south, I guess.

Yeah, we do find it in North Carolina. The Uncle Remus stories by Joel Chandler Harris use it. Those are from 1904, and I believe he was from North Carolina.

I love that added nuance of care and concern in there.

I do too, yeah. Even though it’s a kind of hyper-fancified way of talking, you know, that kind of stilted way that we sometimes think of the Old West where people would just kind of put on their best artificial manners. They didn’t really have book learning, but they could put on a fancy voice in the best way they knew how. It’s kind of a little bit of that.

Yeah, it’s like pushing back from the table and saying, I’m sufficiently suffunsified.

Yeah, it’s exactly that kind of tone.

So, Kendall, how is your copperosity today?

How is your copperosity?

My copperosity is fabulous right now, especially because I’m on the show and I’m getting all this information.

Well, it has been delightful to talk with you, Kendall. We are just so happy to have you on the show. Call us again sometime, all right?

Oh, I will do that. And thank you all so much. And I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. And I hope your copperosity remains good as well.

Well, I hope that you have an upstreet sort of day and a jug full of sunshine or whatever it was. Take care of yourself. Bye-bye.

Thanks a lot.

Okay. We’d love to hear from you too. 777-929-9673 or send your stories and questions about language to words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, have you ever had a traffic light Sunday? One that’s so good it stops traffic. It sounds that good. It’s vanilla ice cream decorated with red, white, and green cherries topped with nuts, crushed fruit, or whipped cream.

No blueberries?

Why would you have blueberries on a traffic light?

I don’t know. It needs to cut some of everything else.

I think that sounds delicious.

That sounds wonderful. I have not had that. I’ll add that to my life list.

Share your linguistic discoveries with us, 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Aksa, and I’m calling from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Hi, Aksa. Welcome to the show.

Well, here’s the thing. I’ve been making my very own vanilla since 2017. My sister taught me how. And recently I went to Hawaii, and lo and behold, they had a vanilla plantation there, and we took a tour. And then the guy was explaining how vanilla is such a complicated plant to fertilize, to pollinate, because there’s only one bee that can do it. It’s a Brazilian bee and it’s not all that reliable. So they can count on it. So it has to be fertilized, you know, by people and have to have a certain time frame. They have to stress the plant to make it think it’s dying and then it produces the pod.

So he mentioned that because it is such a complicated plant, he doesn’t understand why people usually refer to something being vanilla as being plain, when vanilla is definitely not plain. So I was like, I wonder why we came up with this idea of calling things that are plain vanilla.

What a great question.

Yeah, and there’s all kinds of history about that, if you get the actual vanilla. And it has an interesting story. It was indigenous to Mexico, actually, and it was brought to Europe in the 16th century. And this new flavor became a favorite of the upper classes. It was added to pastry, for example, and Queen Elizabeth I in England adored vanilla and supposedly had it every single day or had something cooked with vanilla every single day.

And then Thomas Jefferson was actually enchanted with it when he went to Paris and he brought back a recipe for vanilla ice cream and helped to popularize it in this country. I mean, it’s hard to imagine this now, but at the time, this was this fancy new flavor. As you suggested, it later came to serve as a base for other ingredients in ice cream. You know, it became sort of the canvas for butter pecan and chocolate chip and fudge swirl and fruits.

But by the late 19th century, at least we start seeing the expression plain vanilla, you know, without all those things. And it’s also really interesting that the use of vanilla being kind of bland was influenced by jazz to some degree. In the 1930s, the saxophonist Lester Young used to tell piano players to just play vanilla. And by that, he meant, you know, keep your accompaniment simple so that the rest of us can shine.

And then over time, as you suggested, the term vanilla came to apply to other things that were, you know, just basic or run-of-the-mill or ordinary. And then in the 70s or so, we start hearing about vanilla having to do with vanilla sex as opposed to something less conventional. But it’s a fascinating story how this flavor went from being something, you know, so unusual and exciting for people to, you know, something that we think of as kind of basic and boring.

Huh. I see. Well, you know, the real vanilla is quite expensive. And then you have, when you find something cheap, then it’s like you have to read the fine label. And it usually says, real imitation vanilla.

Right, right. You have to pay attention to that.

Well, you have been a delight and very informative. And I can’t believe how much we learned during this call. So thank you so much, Aksa.

All right, thanks. We will take your plain vanilla questions and we’ll take your black cherry ones too. 877-929-9673.

Here’s a lovely bit of writing from a book called The Flavor Thesaurus, a compendium of pairings, recipes, and ideas for the creative cook. It’s by Nikki Segnet, and she writes about different flavor combinations that you might never have thought of, but she writes about them in such a beautiful way.

And under Blackberry, she writes, shop-bought or cultivated blackberries, tall as beehive hairdos, bright as spit and polished toe caps, may sometimes be pleasantly sweet, but they never, ever have the countervailing intensity of sharpness, mustiness, and deep spice that comes of growing in the wild.

And then she goes on to talk about the different flavors that you might pick up in that, like rose, mint, cedar, and clove. Some even have a shimmer of tropical fruit. And then she writes, come August, when there should be plenty to choose from, treat the hedgerows like free sample ladies, and once you’ve found a juicy, full-flavored strain, denude the bush until your ice cream carton is full.

Black, shiny fruit won’t be as sweet as those that have reached the matte blue-black of full ripeness, but then again, they’re less likely, having retained their bulbous resistance, to dissolve in your grasp like a teenager’s handshake.

You know what I’m talking about, Greg.

I do. I think I shared this with you. Somebody once described a handshake like that as a handshake like a dead bird.

Oh, that’s really good. And the hedgerow blackberries.

I know it. And they’re a little dusty, and you don’t mind.

Right. And they’re so good.

They’re so good. Oh, they’re so good. Late August in Missouri, the blackberries and the hedgerows. Oh, and you’re sick with them. You’ve eaten so many. And the next day you have more.

Well, that book again is called The Flavor Thesaurus, and it’s by Nikki Signet. And it’s just got gorgeous writing about all these different flavors. I mean, even if you never cook anything in the kitchen, this is really delicious reading. And we’ll share that wonderful book on our website at waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Sue Steinecker. I’m calling in from Nome, Alaska.

Nome, Alaska. Welcome to the show, Sue.

Thank you. I’m excited to be here. What’s on your mind?

Well, there is a phrase that my grandmother used to use, which got passed on to my mother. They’ve both long since passed away and never got an answer as to what it meant. But when my grandmother would eat something really delicious, she’d say, burn my clothing. So my mother would say the same thing, or she’d at least say my mother would say, burn my clothing. And I said, what do you think that means, Mom?

My grandmother was quite a character.

I said, did she make this up? Has it got a history to it? And my mother said, no, I have no idea. Her point was that whatever she was eating was so delicious that she died and gone to heaven. And the only thing left here were her clothes to be burned.

Well, it’s interesting that that was her version because the far more common version is just, well, burn my clothes. Oh, really? Yes, yes. And we see that again and again. It strikes me that it’s similar to a lot of different expressions of astonishment. I’m looking at a collection of slang from the late 1940s. Well, blow my nose. Well, dash my buttons. Well, hush my mouth. Well, bash my binnacles. Well, put me to bed and call me early. Or well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit.

But in the case of… Oh, my goodness. Yeah, I mean, it’s kind of of a piece with those kinds of sayings that express astonishment. Or I think in the case of her expression, it’s the implication that something is so extreme, in her case, something so delicious that, yeah, you’re not going to need your clothes anymore. And I like your idea that maybe it was because she ascended to heaven or something and no clothes are going to be needed there.

Well, that was how my cousin interpreted it. So I thought, okay, well, that’s an interesting one. But that’s so interesting that this burn my clothing or burn my clothes has been used by others. Oh, yeah, since the 1880s at least. Really? But not necessarily in relationship to eating something so good you’ve gone to heaven and there’s nothing left but your clothes? No, but in terms of being astonished by something or as an expression of, an exclamation of remarking on something amazing or surprising.

Well, that’s great. I occasionally say it myself. So we’ll keep it going. Yeah. Well, burn my clothes or burn my clothing, as you say. Yeah, that’s what she would say. Burn my clothing. Thanks for sharing your memories of her with us. She sounds like quite a one. Well, thank you. I appreciate learning more about the origins of her sayings, as well as getting to share a little bit about this remarkable woman. So thank you very much.

Our pleasure. Thank you, Sue. Take care. You too. Bye-bye.

877-929-9673 or find a dozen ways to reach us on our website at waywordradio.org. This show’s about language seen through the lens of family, history, and culture. Stick around for more. 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 great question from Deanna Eby. She’s a retired school teacher in Michigan, and she was reading some of the early work of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Now, long before Wilder wrote Little House on the Prairie, she worked as a journalist chronicling life in the Ozarks. And in one of her early writings in 1916, Wilder refers to what she calls the famous question, how old is Anne? It’s like a rhetorical question. She doesn’t bother to explain it. But there’s a footnote in the text indicating that that question, how old is Anne, actually means simply, who knows?

So our listener Deanna wanted to know why it is that this question, how old is Anne, ever came to mean who knows. And that sent us on a wonderful romp, because it turns out that in 1903, a man sent the New York Press newspaper a puzzle. And it goes like this. Mary is 24 years old. She is twice as old as Anne was when she was as old as Anne is now. How old is Anne now? Person A says the answer is 16. Person B says the answer is 12, which is correct.

Now, let me give that to you one more time. Mary is 24 years old. She’s twice as old as Anne was when she was as old as Anne is now. How old is Anne now, 16 or 12? And this question sparked a huge controversy. The newspaper was inundated with letters to the editor, and people sent in all kinds of different answers, all sure that they were the ones who were right. And there were letters that had all these algebraic calculations in them. Everybody had a strong opinion, and they were laughing at each other’s answers. And overnight, this question, how old is Ann, became the talk of New York City. And then other newspapers picked it up, and people started writing into those newspapers with their answers, and newspapers all over the country started writing about that phenomenon. One newspaper said, this simple mathematical question has conquered the students at Harvard University and is now exciting those of New York City and Philadelphia. All New England is struggling with its comprehensive grasp. Pencil and slate factories are experiencing a period of prosperity never before known.

Oh, I’m sure. Pencils and slates just selling out across the country. I’m just figuring it out. I doubt that, but okay. And Grant, I’m looking at a page from the New Orleans Times Democrat, and it has no fewer than 47 letters to the editor on one page all about this. So to sum up, in 1903, this phrase, how old is Anne, went viral, and it became a catchphrase meaning who knows, and it was something that Laura Ingalls Wilder thought everybody knew well enough 13 years later to use to mean who knows. But is it a math puzzle or is it a word puzzle or is it a combo of the two? Maybe it’s a combo of the two. I struggled and struggled and struggled with this. I was sure that the answer is 12, but I’ve looked it up in a few sources and they say the answer is 18. 18. Okay. Yeah. And when I plugged that number in, it worked, but yeah. But yeah, try, try plugging in 18, but you know, we may hear from people, maybe the same thing is going to happen now. You know, it went viral in 1903 and now it’s going to go viral in this year. Now look what you’ve done, Martha. Well, we will put it on the website if it’s not my fault. It’s Ann’s. All you Ann’s out there.

Yeah, Ann, you beautiful rule-breaking moth, as Leslie Knope once said to Ann Perkins on Parks and Rec. Well, we will put the puzzle on our website if you didn’t get the wording when Martha read it out. And you can tell us what you think. You can let us know how old Ann was. And if you’ve got a puzzle of your own that you’d like to have us puzzle out with you, we’ve got a phone number that’s toll-free in the United States and Canada, 877-929-9673. And you can email us, words@waywordradio.org. And there are a bunch of social media links on our website at waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hello. So my name is Katie Flanagan, and I’m from Factoryville, Pennsylvania, which is about a half hour north of Scranton. Tell us what’s on your mind.

What I called in about was the term sleigh riding. So, you know, growing up, we would get a lot of snow in the winters and we’d always go sleigh riding in the winters, which I always thought was a very common term until I was in my late teens, early 20s. And I met somebody from the Boston area and told him that I enjoyed sleigh riding. And his response was, oh, well, you must have horses. And I said, no, why would I have horses to go sleigh riding? And he said, well, a sleigh, you must ride in a sleigh and get pulled by horses. And I was like, no, it’s just, you know, he said, oh, you mean sledding, which, you know, I’ve heard that term sledding around here, too. And I lived in Vermont for a number of years and people there would often refer to it as sliding. And so I was just very curious where sleigh riding came from. And, you know, for folks around here, you know, you don’t even think about it. It’s just obviously we go sleigh riding and it doesn’t seem like a strange term. So I was just wondering where that phrase came from.

All right. So let’s separate these out before Martha tackles this. So you say sleigh riding, S-L-E-I-G-H. The person from Boston said sledding, S-L–D-D-I-N-G. And when you lived in Vermont, they said sliding, S-L-I-D-I-N-G. Correct. Okay. Got it. Yeah, it’s interesting. There are lots of different terms for this, even besides those three.

In fact, when researchers were going around asking people about dialect for the Dictionary of American Regional English, they had that as one of the questions.

And they said sliding, which is more common in the northern region, sledding, which is what I grew up with in Kentucky. That’s kind of scattered all over the country.

In Pennsylvania, in Ohio, you never heard sled riding? Because that’s particularly common.

No, usually just sleigh riding.

Okay, sleigh riding.

Yeah, that one is particularly common across the middle of the country, and including Pennsylvania, so I’m not surprised.

And in the West, a lot of times people will say sleighing without the riding in there.

This guy in Boston was expecting this large vehicle with runners that a bunch of people could sit in and horses to pull it that you would direct by reins and they would be in a harness and this whole big deal, something you might see on a Christmas card.

Yes, exactly. And I was shocked that he thought I would have horses.

Yeah, you’re probably just on like this plastic roll up thing that you bought at the corner store.

Yes, exactly. Yeah. Like, yeah, I mean, sleigh riding could be for any any kind of sleigh or sled that you would have.

Yeah, maybe the little wooden ones with the little red runners.

And that’s the confusing part is that some of the sleds are a little more elaborate.

You know, they’ll just take one body, you know, you’re down on your belly.

But they do have those little red runners like the big full sleds that seat a lot of people.

So they look kind of like little sleighs.

Yeah, we would often call like the bigger ones, I guess without the runners, we would call those toboggans that we would go down.

Yep.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah, we would say tobogganing.

Oh, well, that’s so interesting.

Thank you so much.

You know, my whole life I’ve always wondered and always, you know, I try to bring up this activity without saying the word just to see what other people call it.

So now I have a story to explain it.

You’re a natural field worker.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, I do love language.

And I love this show so much.

And, you know, we’re trying to keep the tradition on with our kids.

They’re always asking, what does that mean? What does that mean?

There are ways to find out.

And thank you for calling to find out this one.

We appreciate it.

All right.

Bye-bye.

1-877-929-9673.

Grant, you’ll recall our conversation with Todd.

He called us about the term cutting donuts.

You know, you’re driving your car and you start cutting donuts in the parking lot or something.

Yeah, I remember that mischief maker.

Yes. Todd said that the term for that in where he grew up in Kentucky was cutting donuts, but then he went to South Dakota, I think, and people there called it spinning cookies.

That’s right.

Gun the motor and make the car go around.

We got a voicemail from Kevin in Chicago who says, we just called them lawn jobs, which sounds ominous to me.

Oh, yeah. Lawn job is, yeah, a job.

There is a, yeah, there’s a sub-slangy meaning of job, which means something bad, something that was done bad.

Like often it’s a synonym for a hit, like a murder for hire.

Well, yeah. And if you’re kind of murdering somebody’s lawn, I mean, that’s what he said.

It implied that you were doing it in somebody’s yard.

And apparently that’s a thing in Chicago. Lawn job.

But they also talk about the business that a dog does in your yard as a job.

We’d like to talk to you.

We’ve got a phone number that’s toll-free in the United States and Canada, 877-929-9673.

And we’ve got a WhatsApp number that you can use from anywhere in the world.

Find that on our website at waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Yes, hello, Martha.

This is Andrew Nelson from Williamsburg in Virginia.

Well, hello, Andrew.

Hi, Andrew. What’s on your mind?

Yeah, well, as you can gather from the accent or lack of accent, you know, I’m sort of interested in the way in which language and words have evolved.

And particularly, you know, there’s one word.

I mean, most words I’m sort of fairly conversant with as to how they’ve gone through.

But there’s one word in England which is mooch, which basically means window shopping.

But I gather it has some more sinister connotation over here.

Well, sinister. Wow.

Maybe more negative.

I don’t know about sinister.

What did you gather it means in the United States?

My understanding of over here is that it’s almost like casing the joint ready for stealing things.

Not quite.

You might mooch a cigarette.

I don’t know if you’re casing a cigarette.

You might mooch a sawbuck, whereas you would catch a tenner in the UK.

But yes, I mean, that word, you know, is much more sort of general in there.

So as I say, it’s like a window shopping sort of thing.

So you just have a mooch downtown and just basically just while away at the time while looking window shopping and everything.

Yeah, somehow I picked up both meanings of the word.

You know, it’s hard.

Martha and I always have this problem where we play around with our own language so much.

We’re not quite sure where we pick stuff up.

And so we had a cat who was always mooching around the kitchen in my house.

That’s what I would call it.

He mooched around like a dog always looking for food that had fallen.

Absolutely.

And so I have that meaning of mooch in my vocabulary, in my idiolect.

But yeah, in the American English, mooch typically means to get something without paying for it by sponging off of other people or borrowing.

It may imply laziness or lack of ambition.

And taking advantage of other people.

Yeah, I’m just wondering how, you know, the divergence happened, you know,

Because I’m assuming, obviously, that it originated in the U.K. and has worked its way over here.

You know, obviously, it’s been said many times, separated by the common language,

Which, by the way, is the source of a great conversational language.

There’s a blog by the linguist Lynn Murphy, who is an American professor working in the U.K., married to a British man, and she specializes in cross-dialect differences.

And she tells a similar story of going around on her hen weekend, which we don’t use in the U.S., before marrying her lovely British husband.

And she talks about her friends having a mooch around the shops, just as you say, as part of their hen weekend.

And for them, it was just a kind of retail browsing for the fun of it, hoping to strike on something good.

That’s right.

But the how is just the same old story, which is we are indeed separated geographically,

And particularly for the language that’s less common or it has a kind of a underworld or subculture life to it,

It tends to diverge faster or diverge more often anyway.

And mooch isn’t common enough to keep its meaning in the mainstream.

The common words that are more mainstream stay more consistently between the two countries.

They’re more even.

Well, Andrew, thank you so much for asking about this.

And as somebody who is a fish out of water in the United States, we expect you to call more regularly with comments on how English in the two countries differs.

Thank you both. It’s very nice to talk with you both.

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

Bye.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Beth Rickenbaugh.

I’m calling from Charlotte, North Carolina.

When I was growing up back in the 60s and 70s, my grandmother had a saying that I’ve never heard from anyone else.

If I walked in the room and she thought my hair looked a mess, she said, Beth, your hair looks like a hoo-hoo bird in a haw-haw tree.

And I just knew that I needed to go find a comb or a brush and get busy.

And never really thought about what it meant or, you know, where it came from until I listened to your show a couple times and I happened to remember it.

So I’ve never heard anyone else say it, just my grandmother.

So you would be disheveled and she would say you look like what?

A hoo-hoo bird and a haw-haw tree.

But just my hair it didn’t it didn’t have anything to do with what I had on this was the 60s and 70s.

So you know I’m the teenager in the 70s. I never got that comment for anything I wore. It was just my hair was the best according to her. Well, I think what’s going on is that there are a couple of linguistic strands here, and your mom may have combined them because there’s another much more common expression, like a hurrah’s nest, like the word hurrah, like a hurrah’s nest or a hurrah’s nest.

And a hurrah or a hurrah supposedly is some sort of big, messy animal, probably a bird. And at least since the early 19th century, to say something looks like a hurrah’s nest is to say it looks like a mess.

And then there’s also a tradition of talking about a hoo-hoo bird. And a hoo-hoo bird is a mythical bird that has unusual characteristics. There’s lots of different stories about hoo-hoo birds. Sometimes they’re described as this creature that flies backwards to keep the dust out of its eyes.

Or this bird sticks its head in the sand and whistles out its rear end. But anyway, the expression hoo-hoo’s nest in a ha-ha tree, I see that in a 1933 newspaper from Vermont. Somebody quotes their grandma’s old saying, go brush your hair. It looks like a hoo-hoo’s nest in a ha-ha tree.

That’s very similar. It’s not altogether that common, though. And hoo-rah’s nest has faded in use over the last century or so. So folks like you that have got memories of the generations saying it, that’s kind of the last hanging on of it, the last minutes of it.

Beth, it’s lovely that you have that linguistic heirloom to carry on. Well, thank you. Thanks for the explanation. That’s great. And thanks for sharing your memories with us. We appreciate it.

All right. Well, have a great day. All right. You too. Be well. Take care, Beth. Bye-bye. Take care. Bye-bye.

Share your linguistic memories with us, 877-929-9673. We heard from Erica Cohen-Lyons, who’s based in Hong Kong, and she writes, my niece is convinced that Abraham Lincoln’s name is actually Abraham LinkedIn, and I will never hear it any other way again. I’m waiting for the friend request.

Reach out to us, 877-929-9673. Our team includes senior producer Stefanie Levine, engineer and editor Tim Felten, and quiz guide John Chaneski. We’d love to hear from you, no matter where you are in the world.

Go to waywordradio.org contact. Subscribe to the podcast, hear hundreds of past episodes, and get the newsletter at waywordradio.org. Whenever you have a language story or question, our toll-free line is open in the U.S. and Canada, 1-877-929-9673.

Or send 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.

Special thanks to Michael Breslauer, Josh Eckels, Clare Grotting, Bruce Rogow, Rick Seidenwurm, and Betty Willis. Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette. And I’m Grant Barrett. Until next time, goodbye. Bye.