Hang a Ralph (episode #1446)

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, I have a riddle for you.

Oh, please, yes.

You throw away the outside and cook the inside.

Then you eat the outside and throw away the inside.

What is it?

A pumpkin.

A pumpkin.

Potatoes, because you peel potatoes.

No, because you eat it all.

You’re warm.

You’re warm.

It’s a starch.

I’m a little warm.

You throw away the outside and cook the inside.

Then you eat the outside and throw away the inside.

Tapioca.

Cassava.

I don’t know.

I’m thinking of yucca.

I’m thinking of starches.

I don’t know.

Another name for tapioca is cat’s eyes.

Did you know that?

Cheetos, because you open the bag, and then you eat the orange off your fingers, and you

Throw out the starchy stuff in the middle.

No, no, no.

It’s corn on the cob.

Oh, I love corn on the cob.

Throw it on the outside.

Okay, good.

Eat the inside.

Okay.

That’s a good one.

I’ll take that home and see what my son says.

Okay.

What else do you have for me there?

How about this one?

You go in one hole and come out three holes.

When you’re outside, you’re inside.

And when you’re inside, you’re outside.

What is it?

Oh, is it an aviary?

Is it a birdhouse?

Is it a hospital?

Because you go in and you have a baby and you come out with twins.

Three whole people come out.

I am loving your answer so much.

Is it H-O-L-E or W-H-O-L-E?

It’s H-O-L-E.

Oh, I don’t know.

Go in one hole and come out three.

It’s a sweater.

Oh, oh, it’s true.

When you’re outside, you’re inside.

When you’re inside, you’re outside.

It’s a sweater.

A sweater.

But I really like your answer.

I’m struggling here.

I’m trying, you know.

I’m enjoying hearing your brain work.

Sure, right.

Yes.

And we’d enjoy hearing from you.

Call us to talk about language, 877-929-9673, or send us an email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Dan, and I’m calling from Los Angeles.

Hi, Dan. Welcome. What’s on your mind?

Thank you so much. So the other day I was in the car with my friend Corey.

And a little backstory, Corey is from Salt Lake City, Utah, and I’m from a really small town in upstate New York.

And Corey was giving me directions, and we came to a stoplight, and he said, okay, he’s like, at the light, go ahead and hang a Roscoe.

And I said, a what? He said, hang a Roscoe. And I was like, no, you mean hang a Ralph.

I don’t know who Roscoe is. And he’s like, well, I don’t know who Ralph is.

We agree on Louie when you take a left, it’s hang a Louie.

We, you know, we’re universal on that, I guess.

But we are wondering who are Ralph and Roscoe and why the difference.

Do you ever bang a Roscoe or bang a Ralph?

No, you bang a Yui.

You bang a Yui.

You bang a Yui.

You don’t hang a Yui.

You know, but never bang a Louie or a Ralph.

What do you do, Martha?

Do you hang a right?

I just turn right.

I hang a right.

You turn right.

You don’t even hang a right.

I let the Google lady tell me now.

Dan, do you ever bust a Yui?

No, I’ve never bust a Yui.

You’ve never bust a Yui.

Okay.

There’s so many of these.

There’s so many of these.

And it’s funny how many of them have to do with names.

I think there’s, I only know Louis for left.

And as far as I’ve ever seen in the slang dictionaries, that’s the only one that I know.

And inevitably we’ll get a call or an email from somebody saying,

Leon.

We in our town, we use something else.

Leon.

Hang a Leon.

Hang a Luan.

I don’t know.

I did a quick Google search, and the only thing, I couldn’t really find anything on the history, but people also say hang a Reggie, and I just think that’s too far.

I can’t.

Well, some people do hang a Rachel and a Roger or a Rochester.

There’s a few of these.

Yeah.

Do you ever whip a Yui, chuck a Yui?

There’s a ton of these.

No.

But, you know, we do have an example in the slang dictionaries.

I say the slang dictionaries because they all basically have the same citation.

So in the New Partridge Dictionary of Slang in Unconventional English and in the Historical Dictionary of American Slang and a couple other places.

They have Hangarosco from 1966.

So we at least know that it goes back to the 1960s.

I would not be surprised if it’s a lot older.

Why we insist on coming up with these names for the turns, we don’t really know.

There are a number of places in American slang where we do suggest, like to Ralph, it means vomit is kind of a name, although it might be onomatopoeic.

There’s a few places where we do take names for things for some unknown reason.

But also it kind of echoes the military assignment of names to the alphabet in order that they may have clarity over the radio.

But we’re not 100% sure why there are names for this, why people use Roscoe and Ralph and so forth.

And in your research, did you find anything about regional?

Like am I more likely to hear Ralph in the Northeast and Roscoe in the West?

Nothing convincing.

I know that there are people who will, with great confidence, will chime in on a conversation thread and everyone in Miami says whatever, you know, Roger, Hanger Roger.

But then there’ll be somebody else who will chime in a couple of comments later going like, I’m from Miami.

I’ve lived here my whole life.

Nobody in my family says that.

So there’s no convincing evidence.

Although I suspect that if somebody were to give me a very large grant to do the research to figure this out over the next three years, I could do the research.

Yeah, you’d put me right out of the studio, wouldn’t you?

Yeah, I could find something regional about it.

So, yeah.

Well, awesome.

Thank you guys so much.

Sure.

No problem.

I know we’re going to get a ton of calls.

There’s a couple more that people say for different U-turns and stuff.

We’ll just turn on the phone and let everybody call us and tell us what they say for a U-turn, a right turn, and a left turn.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thanks, Dan.

I’m looking forward to hearing those.

Yeah, me too.

Thanks so much.

Okay.

Thanks, Dan.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

The number you can call is 877-929-9673.

Or you can email us. The address is words@waywordradio.org.

And you can tweet us. You can find us on Twitter at Wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Grant and Martha. This is Lucy Frick. I’m calling from Indianapolis.

Hi, Lucy.

Hey, Lucy. What’s up?

Well, I called because I had never heard the phrase coming down the pike until I got to law school.

And then I heard it like only in reference to Supreme Court precedent.

And it seems like such a pedestrian phrase to use to refer to new Supreme Court law.

And so I’ve since asked around, and I’m sitting here in my office with two of my colleagues,

And they had never heard that phrase.

But we’re all in the legal profession, so that’s the long and the short of it.

I want to know where that phrase comes, and do I only hear it referred to the Supreme Court,

Or is that something that really is only used in the legal context?

Really? You never heard the expression coming down the pike in any other context before adulthood?

Never.

Wow.

That’s interesting.

That’s true.

I can understand what it means, but yeah, I had never heard it until I went to law school.

And it means, to you it means?

There’s some new case law coming out from the Supreme Court.

You know, right now, XYZ case is up at the Supreme Court, and we can expect that issue

To become, or that opinion to be coming down the pike pretty soon.

Right.

Interesting.

And what is your understanding of the word pike?

Well, I assume a pike is a road where someone drives.

Right.

Good.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, that’s interesting that you never heard it in any other context.

Never, and then since I called you all, I’ve been asking around both to people who are in the legal community

And people who are not in the legal community, and either people hadn’t heard it before

Or they had also heard it in the legal context.

Boy, that’s really interesting.

That’s interesting because there’s nothing particularly legal about this term at all,

Unless you’re all reading the same website where the person writing the stories loves to use the phrase.

Yeah.

It’s just general American English.

Yeah, and it’s a reference to the longer word is turnpike, and that has to do with an old toll road back in the early 1900s.

A turnpike was a road that had actually a pike going across it where you’d have to stop and pay a toll.

And so the shortened version of that is pike, but coming down the pike, I’ve heard it in all kinds of contexts.

And a pike is a pole or a stripped log or a fin.

Long branch. Right, right. Grant’s explaining my arm motion, which you can’t see.

So people can do martial arts with pikes, for example.

Yeah. Got it.

Yeah. But in terms of legal combat, I don’t know.

Legal combat.

Yeah. It sounds like just sort of a casualism injected into your profession.

Yeah. Seriously. There’s nothing particularly legal about it. You will find this in all

Arenas of American life, both professional and non-professional.

Well, it’s interesting, too, because a lot of people confuse it as coming down the pipe.

Yeah, P-I-P-E.

Oh, right.

Like a system of pipes, and that somehow seems more applicable to Supreme Court decisions

Coming down through the pipeline.

We’re distantly removed from pikes now.

Right.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah, but not so much from pipes.

But P-I-P-E seems to make a lot more sense, so people have reanalyzed what they think

They’re hearing.

Yeah, something in the pipeline, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, of course.

But, you know, we have a lot of attorneys who listen to the show, so we may hear otherwise from your colleagues.

Oh, cool. Yeah, I can’t wait to hear if someone says, yes, no, we only use that for the Supreme Court.

Yeah, so keep listening, Lucy.

I will.

Thank you very much for your call, Lucy.

That’s great.

Thank you.

Take care now. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org or hit us up on Twitter at W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

This is Debbie Habel calling from Vista, California.

Hi, Debbie.

Hi, Debbie.

I had a question.

I was always curious about a phrase that both of my grandmothers used when I was growing up.

And they were born in 1898 and my other grandmother in 1902 and lived in the Philadelphia area.

But whenever any of our grandchildren would act up or be a little mischievous,

They would tell us, oh, you don’t want to be Peck’s bad boy.

Or if they saw somebody doing something, they’d say, oh, there’s a Peck’s bad boy.

And I always wondered about the origin of that phrase.

-huh. And so how are you spelling that?

I believe it’s P-E-C-K apostrophe S, bad boy.

Yep, Peck’s bad boy.

Yeah, there’s a story behind that.

Peck’s bad boy was a character who did a whole lot of bad things, a little boy,

In the newspaper columns of George Wilbur Peck,

Who wrote in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

So this would fit the time frame that you’re talking about.

And Peck’s bad boy, little Henry Peck, was just as mischievous as you can possibly imagine.

He would do things like stick stinky cheese into his dad’s hat.

Oh, my gosh.

Or one time he let a tiger out of the cage, you know, when the circus came to town.

I mean, he was just sort of the personification of mischief.

And, in fact, there were a couple of movies based on these newspaper columns that came out in the 1920s, Peck’s Bad Boy.

You can find them online.

You can watch these really goofy, goofy old movies starring Jackie Coogan in one version.

I am going to look that up.

That sounds so interesting.

And I’m really happy to hear about this.

Yeah, Jackie Coogan in one version and Jackie Cooper in later one.

So, yeah, he was a pretty naughty little boy.

If you Google Peck’s Bad Boy, you’ll find an advertisement for the 1883 collection of Peck columns called Peck’s Bad Boy and His Pa.

And there’s a description here of the boy that I want to read to you.

This last book from the prolific pen of George W. Peck is beyond all doubt the great humorous masterpiece.

Peck’s Bad Boy is a holy terror.

He is full from top to toe of pure, unadulterated cussedness.

He hungers and thirsts after mischief.

No day passes, but he invents and puts in practice some new form of deviltry.

Oh, my God.

True rascal.

But I’m sure you all were never that bad when your grandmothers were talking about that.

No, yeah, it must have been an exaggeration.

Well, I am definitely going to research that more, and I’d love to read more,

And maybe see one of the movies would be fun.

Yeah, yeah, check out the movies.

I will.

Thanks, Debbie.

Good old-fashioned fun.

Thanks for calling, Debbie.

Take care.

Yes.

Bye-bye.

Thank you so much.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

Peck’s bad boy.

I don’t know if I was ever quite as bad as the guy in the books.

Share your language stories, 877-929-9673.

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 on the line from New York is John Chinesky, our quiz guy.

Hi, John.

Hi, Martha.

Hi, Grant.

How’s it going?

What’s up?

How are you doing?

I’m doing great. You know, I know how much you guys love sports trivia.

So much.

Which is not so much.

So we’re not going to do that today, right?

No, I’m afraid. I think we’re going to do a little bit.

Unless it’s tennis, I know you’d rather not.

However, there is quite a bit of sports trivia that is word-related.

So let’s talk about team names.

Okay.

One of my favorite things.

Oh, lordy.

For example, the NFL franchise in Cleveland is called the Browns.

Now, exactly why would they be called the Browns?

Is it because of the particular orange-brown clay on the banks of the Cuyahoga River?

Or is it because one of the team’s founders was Coach Paul Brown?

Ooh.

I have no idea.

Well, this is the thing.

I’m just giving you 50-50 shots.

Yeah, I know.

That was generous.

It is the coach thing.

Yes, Paul Brown.

Yeah.

There you go.

Let’s see what else you know.

Now, which professional sports team is named for a movie?

The Anaheim Ducks or the Chicago Bulls?

The Anaheim Ducks.

Yes.

Do you remember the movie?

The Mighty Ducks.

The Mighty Ducks.

1992.

Hey, we got one, Grant.

That’s a good one.

That’s right.

That’s a good movie.

They were the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim.

Now they’re just the Anaheim Ducks.

Now, there’s not a lot of great music coming out of Salt Lake City, yet there’s an NBA team

Called the Utah Jazz.

True or false, the name comes from a very profuse local flower, Jasmine.

False.

False is right.

The team moved to Utah from New Orleans.

That’s right.

You know that.

You did know that, right?

Darryl Griffith, yeah.

There you go.

That’s where the job comes from.

See, we’re not getting bageled here.

This is good.

No, you’re not.

Speaking of New Orleans, that city was awarded its football franchise on what date in 1966?

Do we get an A and a B here?

No.

I think you can reason this out.

Really?

Yeah.

We have to name the—so it would be on Mardi Gras.

Oh, what’s the name of the team there?

The New Orleans Saints.

Right.

All Saints Day?

Yes.

And what is All Saints Day?

You happen to know what that is?

Oh, November 1st?

Yes, it is.

November 1st.

See?

You guys know a lot more sports trivia than you think.

We do.

November 1st.

Right, okay.

All Saints Day.

Now, what precisely are Major League Baseball’s Los Angeles Dodgers dodging?

Trolley cars.

There are no trolley cars in Los Angeles anymore, but there were many in Brooklyn, which is where the Dodgers came from.

That’s right.

Some people are still sore about it.

I know.

Believe me.

I live in Brooklyn, and I still every once in a while run across somebody who does mention that they’re not happy about the Dodgers moving.

Now, some of these are just things that are just tangentially sports-like.

They’re just knowing about language, too, is very important.

For instance, this last one here is very important to know about language.

In 1890, a baseball league known as the Players League collapsed.

When it did, a team called the Alleghenies recovered some of their former players from that league

And also stole a pair of players from another team.

After being accused of stealing the players, the Alleghenies proudly changed their name to what?

The Yankees.

That’s a great idea.

It’s not Yankees.

No, but they didn’t yank the players.

The thieves, the robber, they stole the players.

Yeah.

So they were the…

They didn’t yank them.

Right.

That was good.

Allegheny.

So we’re talking Pennsylvania?

Are we talking…

Yeah.

Who else plays baseball in that part of the country?

Pirates.

Oh, the pirates.

Yes, that’s it.

Oh, my gosh.

They pirated the players.

And actually, at one point, they put pirates on their shirts.

They were like, oh, whatever.

We’re pirates.

We pirated these two guys.

And so we’re the pirates.

Arr.

That’s how they got it.

Arr.

Freebooters.

I knew there was so much etymology involved in sports names.

I know.

Isn’t it great?

Yeah.

All right.

Good stories.

So that’s it for today, guys.

You were fantastic.

Hit the showers.

Got it.

Will do.

Thanks, John.

Really appreciate it.

You go that way, Grant.

I’m going this way.

Take care, John.

Take care.

This is a show about all things linguistic.

Call us, 877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Talk to us on Twitter at W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

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Just look for A Way with Words.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Yes, this is Jo Bailey from Bayfield.

Hi, Jo, from Bayfield where?

Wisconsin, Lake Superior.

Oh, Lake Superior, right.

Hi, Jo, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much.

How can we help you?

I have a grandmother, had a grandmother, who was extremely creative with words.

She made up her own.

And the reason I called in is because she would tell me when I stayed overnight with her when I was young that I could go and sajle in the tub.

And my question was, I don’t even know how to spell it.

Is that a real word?

And what does it mean?

What does sajle mean?

Well, to me, it means just relax in the tub.

And, you know, I’ve never, my kids tease me about, that’s a real word, Mom.

And I said, well, it’s real to me because of my grandma.

But I don’t even, S-A-G-G-L-E, I don’t know.

S-A-G-G-L-E, Sajl.

I’ve got a spelling for you.

I Sajl, you Sajl?

S-O-Z-Z-L-E, maybe S-O-S-S-L-E.

And here’s how I know.

This term actually has a history beyond your grandmother.

Really?

Yeah, we have this recorded as far back as 1848 in Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms,

Where he talks about it meaning to lull or to lounge or get this, to go lazily or sluttishly about the house.

And by sluttishly, it has nothing to do with morals.

It’s just about in an unkempt or unclean way.

But generally, the lull or lounge sense is exactly what you’re talking about.

Oh, my goodness. Isn’t that something? Well, I’ll win the bet.

I’ve heard sozzle meaning to get drunk.

You get really sozzled.

It’s almost always sozzled.

It’s never, almost never is it actually a conjugated verb in any other way.

It’s always that past form.

But there’s, you know, Joe, there’s one more thing with sozzled to say here.

There are some entries in the Oxford English Dictionary that kind of overlap with the lull and lounge meanings.

And one of them is to splash or to wash by splashing, which is perfect, right?

It’s not very common, though, but it is recorded in the dictionary in the mid-1800s to the late 1800s.

And another verb, S-O-S-S, which may be connected, and it’s probably a Scots word,

Has a meaning that may mean to drench or to soak or to splash but with mud and dirt.

So we have some overlaps here.

And Martha’s right.

This sozzle is definitely connected to be sozzled, to be drunk,

Which is just an old-fashioned word in itself.

How interesting.

Cool.

So lots of history right there in your bathtub.

Well, Joe, thank you so much for calling.

Happy sozzling.

Thank you so much. This is interesting. We love your show.

Thank you so much. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Call us with your language questions, 877-929-9673.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Terry Thompson from Columbian, Ohio.

Hi, Terry. Welcome.

What can we do for you?

I am a professional shoemaker or cobbler, what we used to be called.

Cool.

And I’m wondering why the word cobbler has been used as a derogatory term for people that don’t know their profession.

They’ll say the guy is a shoemaker or he cobbled it up.

And the profession of shoemaking has always been an honorable profession.

I don’t know where it got morphed out to mean something less professional, that you’re not doing a good job at it.

So you’re thinking of when somebody says he cobbled together a solution,

That means he slapped it together in a kind of roughshod way without any real finesse.

Yes.

Or he might be a mechanic who says, oh, he’s just a shoemaker.

Oh, yeah.

That’s another one.

I don’t take offense at it.

I just say it’s interesting because I am a shoemaker.

And they look at me and say, really, are any of those still around?

Yeah.

I’m curious how you got into it.

I basically got hurt.

I was a structural steel welder.

Welded huge pieces of equipment.

I hurt my back.

And I fell back on a hobby that I had in Arizona.

When I was growing up, I hand-tooled and made saddles.

Oh, yeah.

And made belts and stuff.

So I figured, now how hard would it be to repair shoes?

So when I got hurt, I bought a shoe repair shop,

And I started repairing shoes, and then I started making shoes,

And that was 40 years ago.

Wow, that’s cool.

Oh, wow, that is really cool.

And so your question is, why is this honorable profession put down by people thinking of cobbling as something half-hearted?

And why is shoemaker used as a pejorative in some industries?

Because it’s also used in cooking and in kitchens.

Professional chefs will call somebody who’s not up to snuff or up to par a shoemaker or a shoemaker.

Yeah, yeah, that’s true. I did hear it. Yeah, I did hear them, yeah.

And there’s teen slang from the 1950s of calling somebody a shoemaker as a boy who’s not particularly intelligent.

I did not know that.

Yeah, there’s a ton of, there’s even a word in French, which is kind of, has two meanings.

One is shoemaker.

One is a worker of the worst description, according to this old dictionary.

I think it goes back to when cobbler wasn’t the person who made shoes.

They were the person who mended shoes.

And they might take a bunch of different shoes and piece them together to make a new shoe.

So I might get some hand-me-down shoes from the wealthier person in the village

And go to the cobbler and he would take these shoes and a sole from here and upper from there

And make me a pair of shoes.

And so it was clearly a patch job.

The old name for somebody who made shoes was a cord wainer, C-O-R-D-W-A-I-N-E-R, cord wainer.

And actually with an interesting etymology from Cordoba in Spain, and it referred to this particular product that came out of a particular place.

I don’t know what else to say, but I think that that’s where the original misunderstanding of cobbler lies.

However, cobbler now is generally synonymous with shoemaker.

And so we’ve lost that older distinction where a cobbler was just the person who mended shoes or patched them together.

And a cordwain or a shoemaker was somebody who actually made them from scratch, you know, original leather, original soles and this whole thing.

Yeah, we talk about cobbling together a solution.

It’s kind of a half-hearted kind of makeshift solution,

Which isn’t all that complimentary necessarily.

Well, Terry, I want to leave you with something

Which may give you a feeling of kind of the importance of your trade.

In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar,

There’s a part where they do a pun on the two meanings of cobbler,

Where a cobbler was not necessarily somebody who fixed shoes,

But they could repair anything, kind of a mender of whatever.

And so there’s this whole passage where they’re trying to, somebody of authority says to a cobbler, what are you?

He says, I’m a cobbler.

He’s like, yeah, but what are you?

And there’s a part where he’s speaking, this cobbler, and he says, truly, sir, all that I live by is with the all, A-W-L.

I meddle with no tradesman’s matters, nor woman’s matters, but withal I am indeed, sir, a surgeon to old shoes.

When they are in great danger, I recover them.

As proper men as ever trod upon neat’s leather have gone upon my handiwork.

And by neat’s leather, that’s the leather from the animals that have neat foots, right?

Neat feet, the particular split of the hoof.

Right, right.

And so it’s a really nice—he’s proud of his profession, and he’s speaking truth to power, essentially,

And saying, I’m not just a cobbler.

Men walk upon my work.

I support the greatest men of the world.

Yeah, that’s cool.

That’s really cool.

I’m very proud of my profession.

I don’t take offense to that because I’m the only one with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of miles.

I mean, I don’t know of any other shoemakers.

Well, Mr. Shoemaker, we are happy to take your call.

Give us a call another time, anytime you want to talk about language in the shoe trade, all right?

All right. Thank you very much.

Take care.

Thanks, Terry.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

We’d love to hear about the inside of your profession, 877-929-9673.

Send all your language stuff to us, words@waywordradio.org.

And join us on our Facebook group.

Just search for A Way with Words in Facebook.

Rabbi Michael Burke from San Diego wrote in with a word that I haven’t heard in a very, very long time,

And I’d forgotten how much I like the word and how handy it is.

The word is stroppy, S-T-R-O-P-P-Y.

You know what that means, Grant?

It’s hard to define in my mind, but a stroppy person is someone who is kind of insistent

Or perhaps maybe demanding is not the word, but curt.

Yep.

Yeah.

Easily annoyed, difficult to deal with.

It may be related to obstreperous, but don’t get all stroppy with me.

I like that.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Eleanor.

I’m calling from Washington, D.C.

Hi, Eleanor.

Welcome to the show.

Hey, Eleanor.

What’s up?

Hi.

Well, I have a question about something I first remember hearing in a song.

The song is called Soul Sister by the band Train.

And the line that always intrigued me was, I just want to see you be with me.

And especially the part where they say, see you be.

I know that he’s saying, I just want to see us together.

But it always makes me think that he’s spelling out the word cub.

And I was wondering if there was a name for this kind of thing where words sound like letters or letters sound like words.

I have a couple other ones, too.

Oh, let’s hear them.

Yeah, like I-N-V-U could spell with the letters I-N-V-U.

Oh, okay.

Or like U-R-A-Q-T, which is a little bit old.

Oh, thank you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, there are a couple of different words for this kind of wordplay.

The traditional one is rebus, R-E-B-U-S.

You may have seen that when you were in elementary school.

Often that involves a drawing or a picture of something, right?

Do you remember seeing those?

The insect, the bee, standing for the letter B.

Yeah, maybe two B.

A picture of the I, E-Y-E, standing for the letter I.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, okay, yeah.

Two B or not two B, something like that.

But it’s all rebus, even if the letter is standing for the whole word, right?

Yeah, yeah.

And the word rebus comes from a Latin word that means by means of objects.

So in the case of what you’re talking about, letters or numbers work.

Another term for this, and you can find a ton of these examples online, is if you Google the word gramagram, G-R-A-M-M-A-G-R-A-M, gramagram, you can find lots and lots of these.

And you know what I would recommend you do is go to YouTube and find the video of The Two Ronnies.

The Two what?

It’s a comedy duo from Britain called The Two Ronnies.

And they have this little routine that starts out F-U-N-E-X.

And the situation there is that a guy goes into a little breakfast place and asks the waiter,

F-U-N-E-X?

Meaning, have you any eggs?

Oh.

And the waiter says, S-V-F-X?

And it goes on and on and on like that.

Yes, we have eggs.

That’s great.

Yeah, and then the guy who’s ordering his breakfast says,

Are you B-C?

Are you busy?

Maybe it’s a lot funnier when you watch the video.

No, it sounds funny. I’ll definitely look that up.

Yeah.

And the other thing that I would recommend you do is look up some books by William Steig, S-T-E-I-G, William Steig.

He’s got one book called CDB, which shows a picture of somebody pointing out a bee on a flower.

And another one called CDC, which is telling somebody to look at the ocean.

And you’ll find lots and lots and lots of these examples.

And in the meantime, I want to thank you for that earworm from Hey Soul Sister.

Oh, yeah.

No problem.

Thanks for those tips.

I’ll definitely look those up.

All right.

Well, we’re glad to help.

Thanks, Eleanor.

Thanks.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

This is a show where we talk about all aspects of language, slang, word origins, regional dialects, and wordplay.

So call us with what you’d like to talk about, 877-929-9673, or send it to us in email, words@waywordradio.org.

My friend Margaret in Nashville does paddleboarding,

And she was talking about some architectural plans for their new boathouse,

And she put a post on Facebook about it that I wanted to share.

She writes,

For months I’ve been trying to describe a Dutch door setup we want at the boathouse.

I’d estimate one out of every 15 people knew that term,

And then we go back and forth on what to call it.

Split door?

Service counter door?

Door where you stand for half of your life trying to get a package at the post office?

Today, the young door salesman says, I’ve heard it called a Mr. Ed door.

People seem to get that.

So there you go.

Oh, yeah.

A Mr. Ed door.

That makes a lot of sense to me because it’s in the credits of every episode, right?

Yeah.

A horse, of course.

It’s like the stall door for a horse barn.

I like that.

A Mr. Ed door.

And now we’ve dropped an earworm.

Yes.

A horse is a horse, a horse, a horse, a horse.

I was trying to get you to do that, and you did.

It works.

Thank you.

Victory for you and the millions of people listening.

877-929-9673.

More conversation about what we say and how we say it and why we say it as A Way with Words continues.

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.

Is a hot dog a sandwich?

Oh, that’s a hard one

What do you think? Is a hot dog a sandwich?

Yes, a hot dog is a sandwich

Because it’s something that has a savory

Filling, it’s contained in a

Carbohydrate, you can add

Different garnishes to it and you can hold

It in your hand to eat, a hot dog is a sandwich

But what about

It doesn’t involve two slices of

Different slices of bread, it’s hinged

Hinged bread, it’s not flat

Bread, it’s not sliced bread

That’s a good point

And the meat on it is round instead of flat, and things aren’t stacked like sediment.

So you can’t stack.

I don’t know.

A hot dog as a sandwich seems difficult to me.

And is an ice cream sandwich a sandwich?

Oh, that’s a good one, too.

Right.

Because does it have a savory filling?

No.

But does it involve two bread-like things with filling in the middle?

Yes.

Yeah.

What about an Oreo cookie?

They call those Oreo sandwich cookies.

Sandwich Oreos.

Right.

How far away from a sandwich can you get?

Well, here’s a question for you.

Is a wrap a burrito, right?

And why not?

When does a burrito, what’s the spectrum of burrito to wrap?

At what point does it become a wrap, right?

Yeah.

Or is a wrap a sandwich?

Maybe technically a wrap is a sandwich.

Maybe it is.

These are questions that when we do dictionary entries that we struggle with, right?

When is dusk?

We know that dusk is at the end of the day, but at what moment does day turn into night

Or day turn into dusk?

I mean, it’s a gradation, right?

Yeah.

And so when we are defining words in the dictionary, we have this struggle to make sure that we encompass as many possible answers, but also don’t over-define it to include everything in the world.

Because you just might say, it’s a thing, right?

All nouns are things.

Yeah, yeah.

Or you define it as, you know, a sandwich is, the hot dog is sandwiched in the bun.

There’s another way to look at this, the problems of defining where a word’s limits are or meaning’s limits are.

It’s better to think about it as meanings rather than words.

Dictionaries are really poor at providing context, right, to make sure that a hot dog is a sandwich in these certain situations and not in these other ones, right?

And here’s another one for you if you want to have a philosophical question over your next wine or beer.

Does it stop, if it is a sandwich, if a hot dog is a sandwich, does it stop being a sandwich when you separate the meat from the bun?

Like you just simply take the meat out and put it next to it on the plate.

Is it now still a sandwich?

No.

Right.

Right.

So there we’re on to something, right?

They still have to be.

What if I take a hamburger, which most people would call a sandwich, and I take that meat out of the bun and set it by the side?

Is that still a sandwich?

No.

I don’t think so.

I don’t think so.

Do you?

I don’t know if I have an opinion yet on that.

I’m one of those people who also believes that open-faced sandwiches aren’t sandwiches.

That was going to be my next point.

If you have a hot brown in Louisville or something.

No, it’s not a sandwich.

It needs a top.

Or what about if you take a slice of pizza and is that an open-faced sandwich technically?

Or if you fold it over.

Right.

And now you have pepperoni inside.

Has it turned into a sandwich?

Oh, my gosh.

Do you realize people are listening and they’re realizing the kinds of conversations that you and I have in the parking lot?

This is frightening.

Well, it sounds more like the dorm room freshman year when you first encountered the friend who had a connection with a certain guy who could get you something.

Right.

Well, what we’re talking about here is what words meaning, the limits of those meanings, and how a lot of what we talk about in language is arbitrary.

If you’ve got opinions on any of these questions, give us a call, 877-929-9673.

Especially if a hot dog is a sandwich.

Explain in an email to words@waywordradio.org or hit us up on Twitter at W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Cindy from Descanso, California.

Hey, Cindy, out there by Corte Madera.

I am way out in the mountains east of San Diego.

Yeah.

What does that mean, cut wood?

Yes, it does.

And Descanso means?

Yeah, there’s a gorgeous trail.

Descanso is, what’s that mean?

It’s a resting place, right?

It’s a resting place.

What’s on your mind, Cindy?

Well, I heard a word when I was traveling in New York last week, and I travel a lot on business, and I hear different regional things, but I’d never heard this word before, and I think it’s a new word.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

And I was in a hotel in New York City having a drink at the bar, and the woman handed me a smartphone where she was doing the credit card receipt on the smartphone, as many taxis and bars and things seem to do these days.

And you sign it with your fingernail.

Instead of signing with a pen or getting a receipt, you actually sign on the screen of the smartphone.

Right.

Right.

And she said she wanted my finger-ture, like finger.

And I thought, wow, that is a great word.

And I thought, I’m going to use that word in the future.

And then I went out, and she told me that she’d made the word up.

And then I went somewhere else in New York and was asked for my finger-ture by someone else.

Oh, really?

Yeah, and I thought either it’s one of those things that just is so obvious once you think of it

That a whole bunch of people are going to make up the same word,

Or she didn’t realize that other people, she had maybe heard it somewhere else.

I don’t know, and I thought, well, I’ll call A Way with Words.

I don’t know.

You’re on it. It could be both. It really could be.

Here’s what I do when I hear a new word just to see how widespread it is.

I go to Twitter and I do a search.

If you type in finger-ture and finger-ture, and there’s a couple other spellings that don’t matter very much,

You will find many, many people have used these words, even to the point where so many people have used them

That other people are complaining about the words being overused.

Wow.

Yeah.

But the earliest use that I know of this for sure comes from 2011.

There was a company that trademarked finger-ture, but then they let the trademark application die,

So they never actually made a product.

And I’m not 100% sure what they were selling.

But there’s another company called Fignature, F-I-G-N-A-T-U-R-E.

So all of these words are forms of finger plus signature.

And they register domain, and they’ve got some social media accounts.

But that company also appears to be defunct, so it’s hard to tell.

There was some kind of online payment system.

I don’t really know much else about it.

Wow.

Now that’s going to be interesting.

I had never heard it before.

Yeah, I hadn’t heard it before either.

I’m wondering.

I mean, it could be Fingature.

It could be Fignature.

Yeah, I have four different spellings here.

Actually, three spellings of that and then another word that’s a synonym, finger sign.

People say finger sign this.

That one’s a little less fun in my ears.

Yeah, I’ve heard that.

But fingerature, fignature, and fingerature.

-huh.

Okay.

I think fingerature is the more natural sounding one.

It is.

Well, and I have to say that the people that I’ve spoken to that are friends of mine and I came back and said I heard this weird word all went, wow, what a great word.

How enthusiastic are you about the term?

I’m enthusiastic about it as thinking that it may be a short-term thing, that it might be a trend that goes through and might disappear in the future.

And because right now it feels so cute, the question is whether it’ll go from cute to common usage will be really interesting to see.

Exactly. Yeah, I’m not sure about that.

We’ll have to give it a 10 or 20 years to find out.

I think probably you just said something that made me, which is in line with what I was thinking, that we’ll leapfrog over this.

It’s just so weird that we require a signature that is so easily fake.

There’s literally nobody checking those signatures.

I’ve never had.

I mean, I could put Donald Duck down 100% of the time and nobody would ever know, right?

But yet if you have a chip in your phone or a chip in your credit card, those things are much harder to replicate, and we tend to keep those very safe and secure.

Yeah.

Interesting.

I wonder how short-lived it’ll be, really.

Yeah, it might be short-lived, too.

Yeah, either way.

Well, and you know, the other thing I thought is the technology may change,

And then we may be signing with our thumbprint or our eye or whatever,

And then maybe we’ll call it an eye-chirer.

Right, igature.

A thumbature or something like that.

I don’t know.

But it is cute.

Cindy, thank you so much for sharing with us.

We’ll probably get emails about this, people who have either coined it or heard it,

And then we’ll know more, all right?

Or like it or don’t like it at all.

Thank you so much. I’ll be excited to hear.

All right. Cheers. Take care.

Thanks, Cindy. Bye-bye.

Bye.

We know there’s new language in your life. Share it with us. 877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hi. You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi. Who’s this?

This is Rachel. I’m calling from Dallas, Texas.

Hi, Rachel. What’s up?

So it’s kind of random.

So I grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and there’s lots of kind of funny Albuquerque-isms.

But the one that I had a question about was, so, you know, when you’re in, like, elementary school and somebody gets in trouble, you know, to go to the principal’s office or you get in trouble at recess and everybody would go, ooh.

Right.

Well, in Albuquerque, instead of doing that, everybody would say, umbers.

So you would say, umbers.

And it’s something that I, you know, anybody from Albuquerque, my brothers and all of my friends that I grew up with, we all know exactly what it is.

But then I grew up and went to college and moved away from Albuquerque.

And whenever I bring it up, anybody that I ever talk to thinks that I’m totally crazy.

They look at me like they’ve never heard it before.

And so I just have no idea where it came from.

If it’s just like a really random Albuquerque thing or what it is.

So I thought I would ask you guys because you’re an expert.

Umbers? Like that?

Umbers.

And so when I grew up, when I was in school, it would have been, oh, like that.

So it’s the same tone, but it’s a different word.

Yeah, and I’ve heard of that, but everybody’s like, what the heck is umbers?

Interesting.

I grew up with something kind of in between the two of you.

I grew up with,

Oh, yeah.

But it’s still got that same pitch change, right?

Oh, yeah.

The performance of it is 90% of it.

When everyone does it together, that’s when it’s got the most power.

Yeah, exactly.

And then your stomach drops.

You’re like, oh, what did I do?

So I’ve looked at a lot of, like, random collections of Albuquerque slang.

Or collections of random Albuquerque slang?

Both.

Okay.

And, you know, most of them are not professionally done.

And this is on most of the lists.

It really is.

Is it really?

Yeah.

So I don’t think it’s just you and your family for sure.

I think you’re right.

It belongs to Albuquerque.

I did find some evidence that there might be people who do it in Colorado, just so you know.

But, you know, parts of Colorado are not that far, really.

But the whole rest of the country, I don’t think people use it at all.

You know, it’s not in any of the mainstream slain dictionaries.

I’ve never heard anybody else that I’ve ever talked to about it has ever been like, oh, yeah, we did that, too.

They’re like, who are you?

You’re crazy.

Did you know the form umbers cucumbers?

No, I’ve never heard that.

Apparently that was the more severe form.

Umbers cucumbers.

I don’t know how common that was.

I found a couple people who mentioned it in different places.

I have two really sorry kind of pathetic theories for you that I’m going to share.

Okay.

The first one is the most pathetic theory, which I wouldn’t give any credence to, so you should just not listen.

And this is that there has been a long history in the United States of a very Anglicized pronunciation of the Spanish word hombre, meaning man.

And those two pronunciations are umbry or umber.

And so my theory is that it has to do with the same way you might go, man.

That’s a really terrible theory.

I can see that. I can definitely actually see that.

You could almost sell that.

My slightly better theory, only a little bit, is that it is the same way that you might, in some places even today, go burnt.

And it comes from the name of the burnt umber crayon in the big box.

Okay.

I think I can see the first one a little more, honestly.

Oh, I like the second one.

They’re both terrible theories.

I regionally, and the people I grew up with, I could see that happening.

Oh, really?

But, you know, something like this, this kind of exclamation, this kind of interjection is nearly impossible to track to its roots.

It’s so very hard to do.

Yeah.

Because it’s contextless except for the circumstance.

Like, it doesn’t keep company with very many other words.

Like, usually when I’m looking into a word’s history, I’m like, okay, so what other words does this word tend to appear with?

And what do I know about them?

And what do I know about the phrases that are nearby?

And this is not one of those things where I can do that.

Yeah.

It could just be an intensification or an elaboration on

I think that’s a really good guess.

I really do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Although I sort of like your goofball theories, Grant.

They’re kind of colorful.

Yeah.

Hey, I can see it.

I can see it.

Well, I’ll just continue to stay with my brothers and people will continue to think that we’re totally nuts.

No, it’s fine.

Let them feel left out.

They’ve got their thing.

You’ve got yours.

Own it.

Yeah.

Okay.

Rachel, thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

All right.

Take care.

Thanks, Rachel.

Bye.

Let us know about the weird language you have in your town.

877-929-9673 or send it to us in email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, my name is Phillip Covington.

I’m calling from Indianapolis.

Hi, Phillip.

Welcome.

What can we do for you?

My mother-in-law used to sing a song to my son when he would ask her where she was going.

She would sing a little song and she would say,

Turkey trot, trot, trot across the lot, lot, lot, feeling fine, fine, fine, until Thanksgiving time.

Trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble, I’m a double turkey trot.

But it just goes on and on and on.

That was marvelous.

Grant and I are both holding our vics up.

I’ve never heard that before.

And my wife told me that she used to sing it to her also when she was a little girl.

So I just never heard that before.

Oh, really?

I don’t know that version either.

I’m going to Turkey Trot Trot Trot.

So this is your mother-in-law singing this both to your wife when she was a child and then to your son.

Yes.

How old is your mother-in-law?

I mean, I’m just kind of shooting in the dark here.

She’s roughly 75 now, 76, somewhere in there.

75, 76.

There was a dance trend in the early 1900s where there was a dance called the Turkey Trot.

It was part of something, a movement called the Tough Dancing Movement.

And these were pretty vigorous dances that involved a lot of body contact.

Probably started in the American West and moved east with the performing companies.

And it was a big trend for a while.

But she’s probably too young for that, I would say.

I’ve seen video of kids singing this song with little turkey, you know, at Thanksgiving time.

So in your mind, this is like a school performance type of song?

Yeah, like little kids who are wearing construction paper turkey feathers and they’re singing this song.

But I don’t remember it from my past, certainly.

So I’m curious whether she picked it up in her own childhood or…

Well, there is a song called Turkey Trot Loose.

If you Google that, you’ll come up with a number of uses of it,

Including an NPR story about Thanksgiving music in 2007.

Turkey Trot Loose, and there’s a ton of kids singing this in a variety of different places.

And it really has the sound to me of a camp song or a school song

Or just the kind of thing that a parent might sing to a child,

Maybe a bath song or bedtime song.

And I imagine there probably originally were hand gestures with this

Right yeah that’s the most that i can tell you about that that particular turkey trot song but

If you want to hear some great old-timey music go to youtube and look up turkey trot there’ll be

Some black and white stuff from the 1920s that does versions of the songs and people are cutting

A rug they are tearing up the floor in some of these videos it’s it’s a it’s a really like you

Work up a sweat with a dance like that but i think the relationship between that dance and this song

Is distant. Yeah, well, Phillip, what we’ll

Also do is on our website, we’ll

Put a link to a bunch of little

Kids singing the Turkey Trot Blues

That sounds a whole lot like

Her song. What do kids have to be blue

About?

Someone stole my track.

I really want

A bike.

Phillip, now you’ve got grand singing.

I guess I’m next.

Maybe we’ll say thanks for calling

At this point.

Thank you so much.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Share the songs from your childhood.

Call us at 877-929-9673 or tell us about it in email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Want more A Way with Words?

Listen to years of past episodes at waywordradio.org or find the show in any podcast app or on iTunes.

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

We’d love to get your messages at words@waywordradio.org or hit us up on Twitter at W-A-Y-W-O-R-D and look for us on Facebook.

This program would not be possible without you.

Grant and I are out to change the way we listen and think about language, and you’re making it happen.

Thanks also to senior producer Stephanie Levine, director and editor Tim Felton,

Director Colin Tedeschi, and production assistant Emma Kelman in San Diego.

In New York, we thank quiz guide John Chinesky,

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

Away With Words is an independent production of Wayword, Inc.

From the Recording Arts Center at Studio West in San Diego, I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

So long.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.