Good Juju

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

And I’m Martha Barnette. Grant, you and I often invite folks to contact our show on Twitter, right?

But if it hadn’t been for a twist of lexical fate, we’d be inviting them to contact us on Jitter.

On Jitter.

On Jitter, because that’s what the service was going to be called, either Jitter or Twitch.

And co-founder Jack Dorsey has said that they were looking for a name that evoked what the service did.

And, of course, in the early days, they would get a text message, and every time that would happen, their phone would buzz or jitter or twitch.

Yeah, they’d do that table dance, right?

The phone kind of just bounces all over the table.

Exactly.

So they started nosing around in the dictionary looking for a word that was close to twitch, and they came across Twitter.

And, of course, that perfectly encapsulated what they were doing, sending out those short bursts of information.

So if that product name hadn’t gone through an evolution, we would all be jeeting.

Jeeting.

Jeeting, sure.

No.

Or jittering.

It sounds wrong.

And, you know, the parent company at the time was called Odeo, and Twitter was an offshoot of Odeo.

Right.

So it could be like Yodeoling or something like that.

I don’t know.

That’s great.

Odeoling.

Boy, I’m glad they chose Twitter.

But, you know, a great place to find out about product names is the blog by our friend Nancy Friedman.

Right.

It’s called Frida Nancy, which is a great name in itself because it comes from an old word that means chirping or creaking.

You know, Frida Nancy, Nancy Friedman.

And she’s got great stuff on there all the time about brand names and how products get their names.

So we’ll link to that from our website.

And the best stuff that she does is when she finds these terrible names of products and reports them and talks about how bad they are.

Everybody likes a bad review more than a good review, right?

That’s right. Fun for the whole family.

877-929-9673. words@waywordradio.org.

Hello. You have A Way with Words.

Hi. This is Lindsay from New York, and I had a question for you guys.

Hi, Lindsay. Welcome. What is it?

Last week, I was hanging out with some friends, and I said that I had gotten a wild hair and decided to do something.

And everyone I was with kind of looked at me like I had three heads all of a sudden.

And, you know, it came out that they actually had no idea what I was talking about.

Now, I’m from the South, and I was hanging out with people that are—one was Southern and one was from New York originally.

So it’s a wide group of people, but nobody had heard of this before.

And I thought that it was a well-known phrase.

Those provincial New Yorkers.

Where in the South?

Well, I’m from Tennessee.

Okay.

Okay.

Very good.

Not that it matters much.

I’m just curious.

Yeah.

But New Yorkers can be provincial.

Well, it just made me wonder if it was, you know, if it was an older phrase or where it had come from and why not everyone knows it.

This is good.

I don’t know why everyone doesn’t know it.

It’s got a good long history.

It kind of pops up during World War II and is spread by soldiers to the regular populace after the war.

It starts showing up in literature in the 1950s and 60s.

And actually, what I’m talking about is actually the longer form.

You’re using the short form.

The longer form is a wild hair up one’s derriere or rear or behind.

Well, now, wait a minute.

How are we spelling this?

H-A-I-R or H-A-R-E?

Either one would be disturbing.

H-A-I-R.

It’s not H-A-R-E.

So you have a wild H-A-I-R.

So just imagine that you’ve gotten a haircut, and there’s a little extra hair under your collar,

And you’re kind of itched, and you’re bothered, and you’re irritated.

That’s what we’re talking about here.

But there’s a kind of side meaning, so the shorter form has become a little more specific.

So if you have a wild hair up your derriere, you might mean you’re angry, or it might be you’re irritated.

But if you just have a wild hair, it usually means these days that you had a sudden notion to do something.

And it sounds like the way you used it.

Yeah, that’s how I was using it.

That’s really interesting.

And so it’s W-I-L-D-H-A-I-R, wild hair.

And so it just pops up in literature in the 50s and 60s and 70s.

You’ll hear it in movie scripts and in fiction and books and newspaper articles.

There it is.

It’s just part of English.

It’s one of those idioms we use.

I don’t know that it’s hugely common, but it’s common enough that I’m kind of surprised that everyone else was stumped and mystified.

That’s what I thought.

You know, my mom thought that maybe it was an older phrase, and that’s why maybe it’s being phased out.

I don’t think of the 1940s or 50s as being that old for the creation of a new phrase like this.

That’s actually kind of young, really.

And it’s so wonderfully evocative, too.

I mean, that’s the kind of thing that makes you do things, right?

Yeah, I got a wild hair.

Get up and do what needs to be done.

Like this thing that’s tickling you in a sensitive place that makes you go get busy.

Well, I’ll spread the word about it.

Yeah, sure.

And they need to read more trashy fiction or something.

I don’t know what the remedy is for their predicament.

I’ll just hang out with you, Lindsay.

Yeah, there we go.

A little more Tennessee and New York, right?

Right.

All right.

Thanks for calling, Lindsay.

Thank you so much.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

You know, we’re joking about this.

There’s no reason that everyone should know everything in English.

No.

It’s impossible.

Well, that’s what makes this beautiful, wonderful, mosaic, crazy, quantum.

We have these things, they’re mystifying to us, right?

Some of the best lexicographers I know, people who work with words and build dictionaries all day long,

Love to tell each other about, here’s this great new word I didn’t know existed and everyone else was aware of.

It’d be boring otherwise.

Yeah.

It’d be boring.

Boring.

You know what’s not boring?

You on the phone calling us, 877-929-9673.

Grant, I want to talk about who and whom on an upcoming show.

But just as a little teaser, I want to give you a quotation from Calvin Trillin on the topic.

He says, as far as I’m concerned, whom is a word that was invented to make everyone sound like a butler.

To whom are you referring?

I do feel like a butler.

Yeah.

Can I make you a drink?

And peel me a grape, please.

Can I top you off there?

Let us know what you think about who and whom.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Diana calling from Dallas, Texas.

Thanks so much for having me on the show.

It’s our pleasure, Diana.

Welcome to the show.

Thank you.

So my question is, can the words used and utilized be used interchangeably?

Because I feel like lately, utilized is like the buzzword around my office,

And everyone uses it all the time when I think that they could have just as easily used the word use instead of utilize,

And it annoys me quite frankly.

What kind of work do you do in your office?

I work for a nonprofit, a large nonprofit.

Okay, okay, very interesting.

So they’re using utilize rather than utilizing utilize around your office.

Exactly, and I feel like it’s getting to the point where my coworker will ask me,

May I utilize your stapler instead of may I use your stapler?

No, really?

Yes, it’s that bad.

Do they want to use it as a stapler or do they want to utilize it as a hammer?

Exactly.

And also part of my job is I look at resumes and I feel like the word utilize is overutilized.

So, Martha, this is really interesting.

We’ve encountered this before.

There’s kind of a new dynamic here.

How do you change the behavior of a whole office?

Well, first of all, you have to point out that there is a difference between use and utilize.

Not everybody observes it, but utilize, as you suggested, Grant, you use a stapler to staple things.

You utilize it as a paperweight or you utilize it as a hammer to put that thing back on the wall.

So when we utilize, it’s about taking something and using it maybe for a purpose that it wasn’t intended to be used for, or when you take something and you put it to good use rather than for the use that it wasn’t meant for.

Exactly.

Okay.

So at the bottom of this, Martha, I think you and I, we agree that you should probably always use use because it’s completely safe, right?

Yeah, unless you’re using the screwdriver to open a paint can instead of to screw something in.

But utilize should be an incredibly rare word.

Exactly.

You should almost never pull it out, right?

Yeah, I would agree with that.

I would agree with that.

And I think you’re right that, I mean, a lot of people are allergic to words that end in I-Z-E anyway.

And if you’re hearing it all around you, if they’re asking to utilize your stapler, I can understand why that would bother you.

So how are you going to handle that in your office?

I don’t know.

I think I will have to convene a meeting and just go to town on them.

And I have two experts to back me up.

There we go.

Yeah, can we listen in?

Can we be on a speakerphone or something?

I want to find out what go to town means in a nonprofit.

You’re going to climb up on the desk and start hammering, right?

With a stapler.

I work for Girl Scouts, and they’re pretty tough cookies.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Of course the Girl Scouts.

That’s a nice joke.

I love that.

That’s good, Diana.

Well, we agree with you completely.

Okay.

Well, thank you so much.

I thought I was the only one, and I was going crazy.

I would say, just as one closing bit of advice, people tend to take these kind of corrections better if you buy them lunch first.

Or cookies.

Or cookies.

Some kind of gentle kind of help.

Like, use is a better word here.

It’s shorter, it sounds better, and it doesn’t sound stuffy and pretentious.

That’s it, stuffy and pretentious.

I agree.

Well, thank you so much, guys.

I appreciate it.

Take care.

Take care.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Call us with your language questions, 877-929-9673, or you can email them to words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, I know that you’re a fan of the comedian Megan Amram, who tweets wonderful things on Twitter.

One of the things she did recently was, what if the brown ones are just clear M&Ms?

Yes! Perfect! Yes!

Perfect.

Well, that got me to thinking about the product name M&Ms, and it turns out there’s an interesting story behind that name.

Ooh, do tell.

Well, Franklin Mars was a Minnesota candy maker, and in 1923, he invented the Milky Way, which you and I have both enjoyed, followed by Three Musketeers and Snickers.

Yum, yum.

And his son, Forrest Mars, moved to England to make and distribute the Milky Ways there.

And in 1939, he moved back to the U.S., and he brought with him the rights to a British candy called Smarties.

Now, these aren’t the Smarties that you’re thinking of, not the little tart ones.

He bought the rights to Smarties in Britain, which are little round pieces of chocolate with a hard candy shell.

Right.

And because there was already another candy by that name here, he had to come up with a different one.

And he went into business with a guy who was an heir to the Hershey fortune, our Bruce Murray.

And so Mars and Murray just put their names together and produced M&Ms.

Well, that’s an interesting story, and I have one for you as well.

Okay.

It’s related to Smarties.

You just made me think of this.

In my family, my brother and my sisters and I developed this method of telling your fortune with the American Smarties.

What?

They come in these little cylindrical cellophane packages that you can see through.

Right.

And there’s a bunch of different colors.

Right.

And each color has a value.

So red means love and green means money and orange is a negative.

So if orange comes before another color, it means the opposite of it.

So if you have orange and greens, it means you’re going to lose money.

And red, since red means love or pink means love, if you have one of those before green, it means you’re going to get a lot more money.

And you can just go through the roll left to right.

You’re going to buy companionship.

Yeah.

Well, no.

We were kids.

You can go through the roll left to right and tell your fortune.

That’s hilarious.

You made up your own little language.

You probably set yourself up at the county fair telling fortunes, right?

Yeah, but what it meant was that when Halloween came around, you would just dig through the package of Smarties to find the one that had the best fortune.

You’d look for the one with the most pinks and greens.

Oh, my gosh.

This is, I’m starting to understand you more and more as we work together.

877-929-9673.

words@waywordradio.org.

Stay with us in the Word Salon for a word quiz and more chat.

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 guide, John Chaneski.

Hi, John.

John.

Hi, Grant.

Hi, Martha.

What’s up, buddy?

Stephen Colbert is at it again.

After the whole truthiness thing, he thinks he can call the shots when it comes to the dictionary.

Now, he’s changed report to rapport, and now he’s dropping the T off any word ending in RT.

Luckily, they still make valid dictionary entries.

Okay.

That’s my premise.

I feel a puzzle coming on.

Yeah.

For example, if he’s telling an anecdote and he feels like he’s being too long-winded, he’ll say what?

To make a long story show.

To make a long story sure.

Sure.

All right.

Sure.

Remember, it’s just the T.

The T sound is dropped.

Just the T.

Not the RT.

Okay.

No, right.

Just the T.

Okay.

It’s annoying, but it’s a puzzle.

Hey, like usual.

That’s right.

Let’s see if we can get some more.

I mean, some more.

Okay.

Colbert got angry at his neighbor for hitting him with a baseball, and he threatened legal action, saying what?

I’m going to…

I’m going to take you to CORE.

Oh.

I’ll take you to CORE.

I’ll see you in CORE.

You can file a TORE, right?

Yeah.

That was question number two.

Oh, okay.

Yes.

Not a crime.

His neighbor’s action harmed the comedian and he was held legally responsible, or as Stephen calls it, a tour.

Very good.

Instead of a tort.

Colbert colbert has built his son a little arboreal clubhouse of his own in the backyard.

He calls it what?

A four.

Instead of a fort.

A tree four.

Very good.

Now, Colbert is actually a great dad.

Whenever his son loses a baseball game, he tells him to congratulate the other guy, saying what?

Good spore.

Be a good spore.

Very nice.

Of course, after a long day conservativizing, Colbert likes to go home and decant a nice bottle of sweet, red, fortified wine, or as he calls it…

A good pour.

A good pour, yes.

Oh, a good pour. I like to go to bars with good pours.

That’s right.

Now, when Colbert puts together his monthly fan club e-newsletter, he wants to make sure it’s visually appealing, but he doesn’t want to spend any money, of course, so he uses free images he finds on the web, or as he calls them…

Clip-ar.

Clip R.

Pirate Clip R.

Colbert often has to explain some complicated political or economic processes to his staff, so he prefers to use a series of boxes and arrows, which he calls what?

A flow char.

A flow char.

Exactly.

I told Colbert my daughter was going to dress as a witch for Halloween, and he suggested they use rubber cement to make a hairy lump on her chin, which he called what?

A war.

A war.

A war.

You got a little war on your chin there.

I offered Colbert a lemonade.

He refused, saying he doesn’t like things that taste…

Tar.

Tar.

Tar.

Tart.

And those are my Colbert rapport words.

Nice work, you guys.

That was great.

Thank you.

I tried to be a good spore the whole time.

Thanks, John.

Really appreciate it.

We’ll talk to you next week, all right?

Thank you, guys.

See you then.

Bye-bye.

You can find all of John’s quizzes and all of our back episodes on our website at waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have a way with the words.

Hello, I’m Gordon Clay, and I’m from Hillsborough, Oregon.

Hi, Gordon. Welcome to the show.

Hi, Gordon.

Great to be here.

Yeah, glad to have you. What’s cooking? How can we help?

Well, I’m curious. I get a lot of press releases, and there’s usually a symbol signifying the end of the story. And most of them seem to be the letters F-I-N, which I assume is Finnish. But there’s also, some people use the number 30, and also the number sign itself, and it can be anywhere from 1 to 3 of the number signs down at the bottom of the press release.

The pound sign?

And I’m just curious of the origins, and do any of these have a designation other than, or in addition to signifying the end? Like, is there a special, are the numbers used for something and the 30 is used for something and Finn is used for something else?

Good question. And a lot of people are wondering about 30 in particular. Nobody seems to know where that comes from, but it is an old journalist term.

Right. That goes back to the days when you would, you know, pound out a couple of paragraphs on your piece of paper and yell copy. And the copy boy would come get it and they would take it directly to the printer. Because you had to know. Do you remember that from the 1940s?

Sorry, she knew where I was going.

Yeah, yeah, I can see it coming. But yeah, because you had to have a designation that that was the end of what you had written.

Right. Right, because if a page fell on the floor, you wouldn’t know.

Right. It might look like the end but not be the end.

Exactly, yeah. And what’s really funny, Gordon, is that just in the last few years, about five years ago in the New York Times, there was a correction that was just fantastic. I have to share it with you. The last line of this article about a murder trial originally was, the judge overseeing the case, Justice Plummer E. Lott of Supreme Court, planned to try the case by February 30th. But they had to run a correction. And it said, an article misstated the schedule set by a judge for the trial in the case. The trial is expected to begin by February, not by February 30th. The error occurred when the editor saw the symbol 30 typed at the bottom of the reporter’s article and combined it with the last word February.

February 30th. And the editor didn’t know. So 30, sometimes with dashes on each side, and sometimes it’s three pound signs or hash marks in a row.

Are there other symbols for the end of the article?

Not that I know.

Well, the one that I see the most is F-I-N.

Okay. I have not seen that.

So you get this in press releases.

Yes. This is always in press releases.

That’s funny, because I was taught to do this when I was a cub reporter in the late 1980s. I’ve seen it in journalism, and it still exists because it’s still a problem. You’re not 100% sure that the other people, that they’ve gotten everything that you sent. They need to know that it’s absolutely the end, right?

Yeah.

Right, right. And oftentimes in the press releases, then there are sources after the 30 or the fin, and those are not supposed to be in the article.

Right. But they’re backing it up to show that it’s the truth and it’s just not something pulled off of some blog.

What kind of theories do you know, Martha, for where this came from?

Well, some people associate it with some kind of Morse code sign-off among telegraph operators.

Okay. And I’ve also seen the suggestion that maybe it’s three capital X’s, you know, the equivalent of three capital X’s, which is Roman numerals for 30.

Okay. But the truth is the journalists just like arguing about it. We don’t really know the origin of it.

But you know what it reminds me of, Gordon? It reminds me of coding software because you kind of have the same problem. You have to tell the computer when you are at the end of an expression or the end of a piece of code. So there’s terminating code that you have to put in there to say, this is the end of these instructions that I’m giving you. And so it’s remarkably like in that way, like the journalist’s copy or the press release copy. You’ve got to tell them the job is finished here. This is the end.

Very interesting. Well, Gordon, can we end it now with, you know what? I’m complete for now.

Okay.

Glad to hear it.

Thanks, Gordon.

Thanks for calling.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673 for your questions about language.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

Hello.

Who’s this?

This is Lindsay.

Hi, Lindsay.

Where are you calling from?

I’m calling from Dallas, Texas.

Excellent. Well, what can we help you with?

Well, I have a grammar question. My job is to write letters to people who experience unusual situations when they travel with us. I work for an airline. And so I have, obviously, coworkers who do the same thing. And we edit each other’s work or look over each other’s letters for tone, grammar, that kind of thing. And one of my colleagues, her favorite thing to do is start a sentence with the word realizing. And I can’t explain why it doesn’t make sense to me, but it just doesn’t. I just don’t think it sounds right. So, like, an example would be realizing this was an unexpected situation. I’m sorry for any concerns you may have had at the time.

And what would you propose in its place?

Well, the problem to me in that sense is that I don’t know who’s responsible for the action of realizing.

Exactly. I don’t know who’s doing the realizing. Like, is it us? Is it them? Who is it? So I think that you have to have a subject either, because in my mind, that sentence, the subject is implied. When you start a sentence without a subject, it’s like, okay, well, it has to be implied. And when it’s implied, the subject is usually you. But it’s not clear here. So I think you need to say, I realized that this was an unexpected situation, and I’m sorry for any concerns you may have had at the time.

Well, grammatically, this participial phrase goes with the I. Realizing, what was it? Realizing you may have questions, I. So the realizing is connected with the I. But there’s something about an apology and distancing that realizing from the I that’s bothering me.

I think if you said, I realize that you may have questions, that’s owning it more. I mean, it’s a tone thing, though. It’s not grammar.

Right. So it’s not only about her, but she’s also removing responsibility for what she’s about to say.

Yes. I would argue that it’s not elegant. And if you are writing letters to customers, whether you’re thanking them for their compliments or you’re apologizing for your own mistakes, it needs elegance. It needs to be a little beautiful. And she’s really, she might as well be writing a user manual.

Yeah. It feels a little evasive to me, you know? I mean, if it’s going to be an apology, I mean, there’s a whole art to writing apologies.

So, Lindsay, your version of that would be what again?

My version of that would be, I realize that disruptions are disappointing and hope you will accept my sincere apologies for the subsequent inconvenience to your body, body, body, blah, something like that.

Right, right, right. I think there’s something about, and maybe that’s it. Maybe, because like I told you, I know it’s wrong, but I can’t put my finger on why. And perhaps that’s it. It’s because the realizing just comes out of nowhere. And so without knowing who owns it, it’s hard to interpret that sentence as being sincere.

Exactly. I think you’ve said it very well. And I’m interested, they tell you to say I rather than we, like we the company?

Well, yeah, because in the particular area that I work in, well, and for the company that I work for, we truly believe that, you know, there’s nothing wrong with apologizing when something went wrong. And taking ownership of it on a personal level gives the customer, well, it just, I think it makes the customer feel better, at least that’s our opinion. And also when there’s a specific name and a phone number on that letter, they can call you and let you know if they have follow-up concerns.

Right, a real person.

A real person. They know that when they call, you’re going to answer the phone.

It’s not going to be a menu or something like that.

Right.

I love it, and I agree.

I think that’s a great philosophy that every business on the planet should adhere to.

Yeah.

That’s good.

I would say feel empowered to help her.

Go to her with your best manner and try to help her come up with some new crutches, some new phrases that are a little more personal.

All right, Lindsay?

And email us.

All right.

Let us know how it goes, okay?

Okay, will do.

Thank you.

Thanks, Lizzie.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

words@waywordradio.org.

We’ve been talking about brand names today, so I want to share one of my favorite lists with you.

A favorite list?

Yeah, you know, lists of words.

Don’t you have these?

Oh, gosh, all over the place.

This one is a list of terms that used to be brand names but are now generic.

Like Kleenex.

Well, not fully generic yet, but close.

How about aspirin?

That is fully generic in the United States, and most people don’t know that it used to be a brand name for the bear company.

Right.

Yeah, and it still is in some countries a brand name for that product.

Yeah, capital A.

Kerosene?

Kerosene.

Kerosene.

Was it a brand name?

It was a brand name, yeah, and dry ice was a brand name.

Now, that’s surprising.

Cellophane?

Cellophane.

That one you probably knew, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. Thermos, you probably still have a little bit of understanding that that was a brand name, right?

Okay, I just thought it was a Greek word.

Well, maybe it was originally, but it was also a brand name for this vacuum device that keeps things cool or hot, right?

That’s the list. I’ll share them on the website, waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Doug from Madison, Wisconsin.

Hello, Doug. Welcome to the program.

Nice to be talking with you.

So I have a question about the word juju.

Juju.

Juju, and it’s been used in the context of bad juju or funky juju or got into some juju.

And it’s something I’d never heard until recently, and I’ve heard it in a couple different circumstances within really just a few weeks.

Well, I hope everything’s okay.

If you have a lot of bad juju, I’m worried about you.

Well, it wasn’t referring to me, fortunately, I guess.

It sounds like a bad thing if it’s funky and it’s bad.

But I’m curious as to why it’s coming up now and where it came from.

Well, a question for you, Doug. Was this from friends of yours?

Yeah, a couple friends, one of whom is also a musical colleague.

And go ahead.

And I’m wondering, were they around in the 1960s?

Yes.

Yeah, one of them would have been quite young then.

One of them would have been probably a 20-year-old.

-huh.

I ask because bad juju really took off in the United States in the 1960s, but it’s been around for a long period of time.

And it apparently goes back to an African word for either a charm or magical object that’s used in casting a kind of spell, something like a monkey’s paw or an animal’s skull.

And juju can also refer to the supernatural power itself.

We heard it discussed during the World Cup.

Do you remember this?

Oh, did we?

There were some people who were accused of doing juju for some of the African national sports teams.

Did it work?

Maybe.

I don’t think so.

The sort of magical part works, makes sense in terms of the friend who brought it up.

She’s involved in sort of spiritual clearing, energetic healing, and she was talking about creating a spray, I think that’s sort of air freshener, except to clear away bad vibes or bad energy in a space.

And she sort of laughingly said that they were looking for a name, and I think, if I recall, she came up with Funky Juju Be Gone and said, well, that said something like that, something everyone would know.

Everyone knows what that is.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I had no idea what she was talking about.

But she’s a West Coast gal.

That explains a lot.

And then the next person who brought it up was an older, mid-60s jazz musician from St. Louis who was referring to someone having gotten into some bad juju.

So having a West Coast sort of spiritualist and then a St. Louis jazz musician and all referring to this thing that I had no knowledge of here in Madison, Wisconsin, made me think I was out of the loop.

What made it popular in the 60s?

I’m not really sure, except maybe it was exotic sounding.

And there was a rise in the Back to Africa movement and African Americans kind of reconnecting with some of the religion and culture of the African continent.

And since that’s where the word ultimately comes from, maybe that kind of gave it a resurgence of popularity.

And juju is also slang for marijuana, but I think that’s a different kind of juju.

Yeah, unrelated word.

So it depends on what kind of bad juju they got into.

We almost never talk about good juju, do we?

No, we don’t.

But there is such a thing for healing.

It’s like a bad drug trip.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I’ve been asking friends about it.

And someone just yesterday brought up some sort of movie theater candy jujube.

Jujube.

Also unrelated.

Yeah.

Also unrelated.

Not related at all.

No, not at all.

Though if you got into some bad jujubees, that would probably not be a good thing either.

Or you might get into them if you’d had some juju to smoke.

But anyway.

Well, Doug, I think your friend’s product has a future.

I’ll be looking for it.

Funky Juju be gone.

Hey, Doug, thanks for calling.

Thanks for having me.

Okay, bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

All right, noodling around here as I want to do.

Yes, you are want to do.

The term dates at least to the mid-early 1940s.

Juju?

Yeah, when it shows up in English, but of course in the African languages it goes back much further than that.

And it exists in a wide variety of African languages.

Yes, yes, especially on the west coast of Africa.

So juju, good stuff.

Is that the opposite of mojo?

Yeah, maybe.

Maybe.

At least in English.

877-929-9673.

words@waywordradio.org.

Coming up, the story behind how heroin got its name.

Stay tuned.

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

We had an email from a listener recently asking if there’s any connection between the word hero and the drug heroin.

And there sure is. And boy, is it an interesting story, Grant.

Heroin was originally developed in Europe in the 1890s as a substitute for morphine.

And heroin was marketed at the time as a cough suppressant, among other things.

Yeah, it was really amazing.

And this was before anybody realized that it was addictive.

And people treated heroin as this major medical breakthrough.

This was because at the time, tuberculosis and pneumonia were among the leading causes of death.

And patients would have these awful, prolonged, debilitating coughing episodes.

And heroin acted as a depressant on the respiratory system, and it helped alleviate the suffering of very sick people.

It was originally marketed by what is now the Bayer Company, as in Bayer Aspirin, manufactured in Germany.

And as for the name of the drug, German doctors of the time sometimes applied the term heroish, like our term heroic, to extremely powerful drugs.

And it also made you feel kind of heroic when you took it.

So it’s not surprising that Bayer initially called the drug heroin in Germany.

And you can see photos of commercial heroin bottles and ads for heroin cough syrups, heroin lozenges, and even cough syrups for kids.

With heroin?

Online. It’s astonishing.

This only went on for a few years.

Bayer stopped making heroin in 1914 as people began to see the results of heroin addiction.

But for a while, doctors were still reluctant to give it up.

I found a passage from the Kentucky Medical Journal where a doctor wrote, I feel that bringing charges against heroin is almost like questioning the fidelity of a good friend.

I’ve used it with good results.

So it’s really…

Wow.

Maybe he meant it on himself.

But that sounds a little bit like some of the people that have come out in favor of tobacco.

Also from Kentucky.

Wow, that’s an incredible story.

Yeah, yeah.

And you can see these photos online.

We’ll link to them from our website, waywordradio.org.

877-929-9673, words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Alina from Fort Worth, Texas.

Alina, welcome to the show. How can we help you?

I had a question that had to do with restaurant lingo.

I’ve been working in restaurants around Fort Worth for about six years, and we have a phrase that we use when we’re describing the size of a table.

We call it, we reference the size by using the word top. So if there was a couple at a table, we would call that a two top.

And if there’s more than six people at a table, like if we had to put two tables together for a group of eight or nine, we call that a big top.

And I always wondered what that was about. Is it referencing the table top or is T-O-P short for something?

What I understand from this lingo, and this comes from all the people that I’ve known throughout my life who work in this business, because every time you talk to them about restaurant jargon, it’s all great.

What I understand is that it originally came about as a distinction between seating people at the bar and seating people at a table.

And so you were emphasizing the top aspect, which is two place settings on top of the table.

Even if there were four chairs, right?

And at a bar, you don’t really care one way or the other because you’re just putting them at the bar, right?

And you don’t even really have to, you’re not setting up a table, you’re not moving chairs,

You’re not changing place settings.

They’re just at the bar, and it’s all kind of out of your hands.

Yeah, and last year I actually worked on a cruise ship for rural Caribbean,

And so this is an international setting,

And even then sometimes we would reference people like that two-top over there.

Right, right.

I just didn’t know if they’d pick that up since we were in the United States cruising,

Or is this truly something all over the world?

I like the big top for the big table.

That’s pretty funny because it does really kind of indicate that there’s a circus happening over there

With a lot of crazy stuff, right?

Yeah, we just say go to the big top.

It’s the biggest table in the restaurant.

Just go over there.

And to keep that table happy, you kind of feel like a clown in a clown car, right?

Yeah.

Running around with your refills and jokes.

Yeah, yeah.

You’ve got your spritzer bottle and your honker and everything else.

I also wanted to tell you guys about a new slang that I recently learned about.

The restaurant I work in is owned by Mexicans in the Fort Worth area, and most of the people who work there are Hispanic, but it’s owned by a Mexican family.

And apparently there’s a slang that’s somewhat regional to Mexico.

And so that’s why it says specifically Mexican.

When somebody orders waters, and if you were to tell another waiter, you know, go get me three waters, you reference that by taking the palm of your hand and tapping your elbow.

And this is brand new to me as a Caucasian in Fort Worth.

But apparently in Mexico, there’s a region where people are considered to be cheap.

I don’t want to name the region.

But the nickname in Mexico only, apparently, for these people is coro.

Coro, elbow.

Elbow.

And so if a table were to order three iced teas, you’d hold up the number three and make a little timeout tea.

And two waters, you’d hold up the number two and tap your elbow to reference that they’re cheap.

And they wanted only water.

Oh, interesting.

I love that.

It’s Chihuahua State, right?

It’s actually Monterrey.

Monterrey, okay.

That’s interesting.

In Argentina, I’ve heard a phrase that translates as tight from the elbow.

If somebody’s a real cheapskate, he’s tight from the elbow.

So maybe that’s what that is.

I have no idea.

I did ask around to some of my Hispanic coworkers why the elbow, and he said in Mexico, that’s just what we do to reference people from Monterrey.

That’s cool.

I love this.

That’s a new one.

Thank you so much for this, Alina.

This is wonderful stuff, and I love the restaurant slang and jargon.

It’s beautiful.

We’ll link to a bunch of this great stuff that we find online.

We’ll put some links at waywordradio.org.

But I also want to say I really got turned on to the kind of multinational aspect of the restaurant business when I was reading Anthony Bourdain’s book, Kitchen Confidential.

And he talks about kind of this multilingual, multiracial, kind of multi-whatever experience of the Spanish and the English, kind of this weird kitchen Spanglish.

And one of the terms that he uses is, tell me if you know this, en mota.

Mota is slang for marijuana, but it refers to dicing up green vegetables like chives or onions or something, or peppers, right?

So you do the peppers en mota.

It means you dice them up so they look like marijuana.

Oh, that’s funny.

No, I haven’t heard that, but I’m a front-of-the-house girl.

I have slangs for customers, slangs for drinks and types of food.

Front of the house and back of the house.

Sometimes they’re called the fro and the bro or the foe and the bow.

All this different language for this stuff.

There’s a friendly battle between who’s cooler, the front of the house and the back of the house.

I will have to ask one of them, though.

Alina, you have to send us more slang when you find it, and we’ll share it on the show, all right?

You do.

I will try my best to find appropriate slang.

We like to wear a little loose with our lips in the restaurant.

I’ll send all that to Grant.

Anthony Bernain works a little blue as well.

Thank you so much.

It’s good to hear from you.

Thank you.

Thanks, Alina.

Bye-bye.

Okay, thank you.

Bye-bye.

Love to hear your slang from your workplace, 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

Hi, who’s this?

This is David.

I’m calling from Wales, Massachusetts.

Well, I’ve been reviewing past shows with my sons via podcast, and we came across the episode where you did Cut to the Chase, you know, the cinematic background of that, which led to us to discuss Cut to the Point.

And that led me to one of the ones my father used to say quite often was Cut to the Quick.

And I can give you a quick example of it.

I used to be riding my dirt bike or whatnot in the backyard, and you’d say, boy, if you ran through my freshly greeted, seated back lawn, I’d cut you to the click.

I was just wondering if you could give me some background on that, if that’s some kind of locational dialect, because both my parents are from upstate Vermont, and I’ve never actually heard it said anywhere outside of that locale.

Was it always a threat?

Usually it was a threat, or sometimes it was just a get you to sit down and pay attention.

Okay. A little bit of like, I don’t know, a slight negative value to it, right?

Yes. Yeah. Always with that. Yeah. There were consequences if you hadn’t done what he was asking you to do.

Okay.

Right. Dave, it’s not a regional term. It’s much, much older than that.

In fact, the roots of this kind of quick go back to Old English.

I see it several times in Beowulf.

The word is quicku.

It means alive in Old English.

And it gave us a lot of words.

It gave us the word quicksilver, which is a term for mercury.

It looks like it’s a living silver.

It gives us the word quicksand, like sand that looks like it’s alive.

And you also see it in the phrase the quick and the dead, the people who are alive and the people who are dead.

And those Christopher Lambert movies, the quickening, there can be only one.

Well, yeah.

Highlander film.

Okay, and quickening during a pregnancy, you know, when the fetus starts to move.

All of that is related to this sense of quick.

And so to cut to the quick is to cut to the very core of your being, what makes you actually alive.

You can cut a fingernail to the quick because you’re cutting down to the part that’s alive and the fingernail’s not.

I heard it used as a fingernail, but I didn’t really think that it would reference back to just cutting your fingernail too deep.

It’s related.

It’s totally related.

Yeah, that part’s really alive.

So if your father was going to cut you to the quick.

He was going to kill you.

Oh, okay.

Well, obviously he didn’t.

Although I probably deserved it more than once.

There would be a sword fight.

Or at least cut you to where it really hurt.

Really hurt, yeah.

Yeah, that part that really makes you alive.

So it’s a really old term.

Alright, well you answered my question perfectly.

Thank you.

All right, thanks.

Say hello to your son for us.

We’re always glad to have the young folks along.

I totally will. Thank you.

Thanks for having me on.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

We talked earlier about how products get their names, and I have another story for you.

This one starts with a boy named Joyce.

His full name was Joyce C. Hall, and he was born in 1891 in Nebraska.

And the reason he was named Joyce is that his parents were very religious.

And it so happened that the day that he was born, a Methodist bishop came to town to visit.

And this was a big deal.

And the bishop’s name happened to be Isaac W. Joyce.

So they named their son Joyce.

Well, when Joyce was a teenager, he and his brothers formed a company to sell imported postcards.

And in 1910, he moved to Kansas City and they opened up a card shop there.

And the card shop burned down, and so the Hall brothers decided instead that they would buy an engraving firm and start making their own cards under the name Hall Brothers Company.

But Joyce, who had a problem with names, didn’t like that name.

He wanted a more positive name, something that didn’t sound so old-fashioned.

And so he pushed for a term that incorporated the family name, but also the idea of excellence or purity.

I know where you’re going with this.

Where am I going?

Hallmark.

Hallmark. Isn’t that great?

You know, because the brand names, they don’t just arise from the earth.

They don’t spring fully formed.

There’s a thought behind them.

There’s a human there.

Yeah, exactly.

Somebody planned this.

Maybe badly planned it.

A boy named Joyce.

The flip side of the Johnny Cash single, right?

A boy named Sue.

Yeah.

Do you think we should change the name of the radio show?

No, I don’t think so.

877-929-9673 is the number to call with your questions about language.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Jane from Indianapolis, Indiana.

Hi, Jane. Welcome. What can we help you with?

Well, I was typing an email, actually, to a friend, and we were trying to get schedules together.

And I told her no to that date because I have a doctor’s appointment.

And as I started to key in doctors, I was completely flummoxed as to what I should do for the spelling.

Because is it plural doctors?

Is it possessive doctors?

And I realized, why do we say doctor’s appointment?

As opposed to what?

Doctor’s appointment instead of?

Well, you know, if I had an appointment with an attorney, I would say I have an appointment with an attorney.

I wouldn’t say I have an attorney’s appointment.

That’s true.

Oh, would you have an appointment with an attorney or a meeting?

Well, that’s possible, too, or a meeting.

Also, I thought about it, and actually I do use it with dentists.

Also, I would say I have a dentist appointment.

But if I had like an appointment with a CPA or with an accountant, I would not say I have an accountant’s appointment.

I would say I have an appointment with an accountant.

That’s right.

And I didn’t know if it was because maybe, you know, we think of our doctors more personally, and it’s more of a familiar thing, whereas I would say an attorney, not my attorney.

That is so interesting, and I’m seeing the white coats.

You know, you would never say I’m going to a dentist meeting.

Interesting.

And the same for a veterinarian as well, right?

Veterinarian’s appointment.

Oh, that’s true.

A vet appointment, right?

Yeah.

And I talked with some of my friends and kind of to feel out how they, you know, say it too, and most of them say the same thing, would say I have a doctor’s appointment.

Well, this sounds like a good question.

My best guess is that it’s what we call in the dictionary business lexicalized, which is it kind of becomes the set-pat way to say it because of habit and perpetuation and not because of forethought or any really great logic.

It’s just that’s the way it is.

And I know that’s ridiculous, but an incredible amount of language is just like it is because it’s like it is.

It’s very circular.

I’ll be darned.

See, I was wondering if there was some, maybe that it was even regional, you know, to Indiana.

And I’m from Ohio originally, but have actually had relatives that had been born and raised in Indiana.

And so I thought maybe it was a regional thing.

Well, doctor’s appointment is fairly universal.

If you look in the big corpora, these massive quantities of text, you’ll find that that’s pretty much what everyone says.

I have a doctor’s appointment.

They might put the apostrophe in a different place, but everyone has one.

But lawyer’s appointment is actually incredibly rare.

Most people have a meeting with a lawyer or a lawyer’s meeting.

I was going to say, you’re a client.

Yeah, you’re a client.

For the lawyer rather than a teacher.

There’s kind of a difference there about whether or not you’re having business or whether or not you’re having something done to you.

Are you working together with this person that you’re meeting with or are they going to do something for you or to you?

Here’s another thought.

You know, you got notes for doctor’s appointments when you were a kid.

You probably didn’t get appointments for a lawyer that you gave to your teacher.

You know, gave him a note and said, I have an appointment with my book.

You know, a doctor’s appointment, I mean, there’s something sort of, I don’t know, when I think about my schooling, I think about it being almost kind of hush-hush and special, sort of in the same way that you’d say, I’m on long distance.

I mean, who cares if you’re on long distance now, but it was special.

I love this idea.

Please excuse Miss Barnette because she had a bankruptcy yesterday and could not attend classes.

I love that, too.

I was a kid entrepreneur, you know?

Yeah, yeah, the lemonade stand went bust.

They closed the lemonade stand.

You know what, Jane? You’ve got a lot to think about.

This is genuinely food for thought.

Fertilizing my brain, the nitrogen levels are through the roof.

So no suggestion as to how I spell this in the future.

Oh, well, that’s easy enough.

Doctor’s appointment should probably be singular possessive.

Yes.

C-O-C-T-O-R apostrophe S, doctor’s appointment.

Unless you’re going to several.

Yeah, unless you’re going to several at once.

They’ve gone to the Mayo Clinic and everyone there is going to treat you.

So go ahead and use that it’s the possessive.

Yeah, that’s the best way.

Okay.

Okay, well, thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

It was fun talking with you guys.

Our pleasure, Jane.

Same here, Jane.

Thank you so much.

-huh.

Bye-bye.

And let’s throw it out to everyone else who’s listening.

Do you have an opinion on why we say doctor’s appointment instead of an appointment with a doctor?

Or why is that a set-pat phrase in English?

Don’t you love this when people call us and make us think about something we never, ever thought about before?

I do. 877-929-9673 or email us, words@waywordradio.org.

Things have come to a pretty pass.

Before we sign off today, we want to let you know that we have a brand new website.

We’re posting new language articles, we’ve added a one-of-a-kind dictionary, and we’ve given the whole thing a new look.

Check us out at waywordradio.org.

And join us online on Facebook and Twitter.

And sign up for our weekly newsletter for the latest in language news.

Share your language story, ask a question, or tell us anything else on your mind at 877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

If you missed a show, you can always find it at no cost on our website, at iTunes, or on SoundCloud.

Our production staff includes Stefanie Levine, Tim Felten, James Ramsey, and Josette Hurdell.

The Way With Words is independently produced and distributed by Wayword, Inc., a nonprofit supported by listeners and organizations who believe in lifelong learning, better human communication, and the value of a thing well said or well written.

The show is recorded at Studio West in San Diego, California.

Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett. Take care.

So long.

Potato, potato, tomato, tomato.

Let’s call the whole thing off.

But oh, if we call the whole thing off, then we must part.

And oh, if we ever part, then that might break my heart.

So if you like pajamas and I like pajamas…

Hey there, podcast listeners.

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