Jump Steady (episode #1435)

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

I’m Martha Barnette.

Subductus, Salivandus, Alens, Travolto, Switch, Taintless, Ambrilla, Escutimo, Dormitory.

Wait, what? Who are you and what are you saying?

It’s my secret code. I just said, welcome to A Way with Words. I am Grant.

You did?

All right, so here’s what happened. I was reading this spy novel by Len Dayton. Great stuff, set in Berlin. And in this book, you know how authors will just like throw in this little thing and not explain it?

Yeah. He mentioned commercial codes. And I’m like, well, now I have to Google that. Commercial codes. Commercial codes. And I looked it up and it turns out that these are codes, like actual ciphers used to hide information from, you know, the enemy or your competitors or somebody else or from the government. And there’s books of these, like many, many books of these and lists of these where you take what you want to say, you look it up in the code book, you write it all out and figure out what word stands for what other word, and then you send that by telegram.

Obviously, this is like from the 1950s and earlier, even late 1800s, really. So in the telegraph era, when telegrams were a thing, you had to hide your messages because the person keying them or receiving the message could read what you wrote, right?

Yeah.

And so these books were used for that. Like you might report on ship movements or you might report back to the home office on what your competitor is doing. Or, I mean, government and business in general use these.

And so there’s this book. It’s called McNeil’s Code. You can find it at archive.org. So you look up thousands of words and then there’s another word that it stands for.

Oh, interesting.

So it’s like the Navajo Code Talkers only manufactured.

Yeah. So what they’ve done for this particular code, and there are a lot of different versions, they’ve pillaged many other languages. And so they’ve got words from Spanish and Italian and German standing in for the English words. For example, salmografo is an Italian word that means psalm writer, P-S-A-L-M, right? But in this code, it means today. There’s no synchronicity whatsoever. It’s anonymously standing in for this other word. You can’t look at the meanings at all.

Okay, so that means today.

Today. Another word, spanditoio, is an Italian word that means drying lines that you might hang your laundry on to dry the clothes, but it means very good.

Oh, wow.

So you just look this stuff up and kind of laboriously figure it out. And so my opening lines were not exactly what I usually say, which is I’m Grant Barrett, because there was no word for Barrett in there, so I only used my first name.

Okay. Let me just close with something else here.

Okay. If I wanted to say call now, 877-929-9673, I would say,

I love it.

That’s gorgeous. That’s the kind of thing I would have loved to have in elementary school, you know, to talk to my friends and nobody else would know.

Wait until the fifth grade hears about commercial codes.

This is terrific. So what’s the book that you can find?

This one is called McNeil’s Code. But if you just Google the words commercial codes, you will come up with a ton of books, many of them from the 1800s, early 1900s. Fully out there.

Very interesting. A lot of them are related to specific domains like mining or shipping, diplomacy, that sort of thing.

Who knew?

Yeah, now we do. Thanks, Lynn Dayton, the great spy novel writer. I really appreciate that tip off.

Well, this is the show where we talk about codes and language and meaning and all kinds of other things. So call us 877-929-9673 or you can send us an email. That address is words@waywordradio.org and find us on Facebook and Twitter at Wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Victoria. I’m calling from San Diego.

Hi, Victoria. How are you doing?

Hi.

I’m well. I’m well. This is such a treat to speak with both of you. So thank you so much.

Oh, it’s our pleasure. Thank you for calling. What’s up?

I got you. What’s on your mind?

So the question, it became a debate one night at a bar in downtown San Diego amongst my friends. Apparently we have nothing better to talk about than the proper use of idiomatic expressions.

We don’t either. The debate is between the use of third wheel versus fifth wheel, as in I don’t want to be the third wheel or I don’t want to be the fifth wheel. The majority of the group believes that it’s third wheel. And I told them that it was time to call the experts and that victory would be mine because I’m convinced that the proper expression is fifth wheel.

Fifth wheel.

So most people said third wheel. You say fifth wheel.

Yeah, why do you say that?

For like an extra person, something that’s superfluous, right?

Yeah, and I think people think of it as like a boyfriend and a girlfriend hanging out. And if you are hanging out with that couple, then you are the third person, i.e. the third wheel. I think that’s where people are getting the expression.

Yeah, I think that’s a fair assessment.

Well, Victoria, I think every one of your friends needs to take you out to dinner and for another drink because fifth wheel is much more common historically. It goes all the way back at least to Thomas Jefferson. He used it that way. You see it again and again in the historical record as fifth wheel to a wagon or fifth wheel to a carriage, something like that. Third wheel has become more common in recent years. And you can kind of understand why if you’re talking about the odd man out, the third person.

Yeah, you said it very well. When couples come in two and there’s a third person, you say third wheel. But third wheel only comes about after the advent of the bicycle. Because for a long part of human history, when we had wheeled things, most of them were four-wheeled. I mean, you had two-wheeled carts and stuff. But the four-wheeled wagons, that’s kind of a canonical wheeled device.

Well, you’ve just made my day, Martha Grant. Congratulations. But I would like to just add here, it’s fine to say third wheel, but it’s not the original, and it’s not necessarily more correct. Neither one of them is more correct, but fifth wheel is the original form. For a long time, it was the most common one. Only in the modern age has third wheel become more common.

Yeah, I mean, it makes sense, too, if you’re talking about a couple, you know, a third wheel on a date. It makes sense.

Yeah, but unless you’re involved in polyamorous relationships, it’s probably going to be a third wheel when we’re talking about couples.

Right.

Right?

Yeah.

Okay. That makes a lot of sense. Well, I’m thrilled to have clarity on it. I’m thrilled to go back to my friends to tell them that victory is mine and that I’m right. And although, you know, noted, it’s accepted in terms of contemporary use that the original phrase was supposed to be sixth wheel.

Yes.

Well, congratulations. This is outstanding. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Take care, Victoria. Thank you so much. Bye-bye.

Thanks. Bye-bye.

877-929-9673. Twitter, W-A-Y-W-O-R-D. Send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Doug Paul from Madison, Wisconsin, wrote us in response to a conversation that you and I had, Grant, about the term man cave.

Man cave.

We talked about man caves and she sheds. Well, Doug writes, I call mine a gentleman’s grotto.

Gentleman’s grotto.

Yes. Please encourage your sophisticated listenership to spread the use of this replacement term.

I actually like that. It sounds like you would have to wear a velvet smoking jacket.

Yes. And you should. You know, I’m going to retire to my gentleman’s grotto. No canned beer allowed in the gentleman’s grotto.

That’s true. I guess it would be a different kind of man cave. It’d be a subset of man caves, right?

877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org and talk to us on Twitter @wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Kimball Richardson from Indianapolis, Indiana.

Hey, Kimball, welcome. What’s up? What can we help you with?

So about 23 years ago when my wife and I got married and I first met her family, my wife Sheila,

One of the first times we were all together was at a birthday party and her family sang the birthday song.

You know, everybody does, but at the very end of it, they put this little tag on it.

So it was like, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, you know, blah, blah, blah, happy birthday to you, without a shirt, and said, without a shirt.

And I was like, what was that, you know?

Well, they didn’t, you know, they looked nonplussed, like nothing had ever happened.

So I was like, what was that?

So anyway, I started asking about it, asking my wife and her parents.

Nobody knows where it came from.

They just always sang it that way.

A few years ago, my father-in-law was taking piano lessons, and the instructor said, well, why don’t I teach you a happy birthday song?

It’s kind of easy to start out on.

And at the very end of it, he said, without a shirt, you know, like that.

And so my father-in-law was like, oh my gosh, how did you know that?

I’ve never heard that.

Anyway, as it turns out, they both are from St. Louis.

Then they’re wondering, is this a St. Louis thing?

But anyway, I just thought it was an interesting question.

I never, ever heard anybody sing it that way before.

And even the people that were singing it don’t know where it came from.

Whoa, there’s a ton of stuff here.

You know, I was born in St. Louis and have a lot of my family, three sides of my family, living around there and have strong roots to Missouri.

And I don’t know that version.

But it strikes me as really interesting that it’s the same melody, and many more, which people sing.

Yeah, right.

Right.

My family growing up would, I mean, I remember at some point people started doing the cha-cha-cha version of Happy Birthday, which I found to be unnecessary, but they seemed to enjoy it.

This song is so old and so common that it has fallen almost into folklore with all the different versions that people sing.

Right. Yeah.

I have heard Without a Shirt every once in a while.

And there’s a 90-something-year-old woman on YouTube who sings it.

Yeah.

She’s been given a birthday cake.

And she sings Without a Shirt.

Yeah.

She doesn’t sing without a shirt.

I mean, she’s wearing a shirt.

She sings, quote, without a shirt.

Yeah, she adds it on there.

So it’s not just you guys, but we don’t know why.

I mean, you would think if you were going to be really transgressive, you’d say without pants or something.

Right, right.

Maybe that’s a good, clean fun to say without a shirt.

It’s a little bit transgressive.

It’s a little naughty.

Yeah.

I mean, it kind of reminds me of the game that we used to play in church, in Baptist church growing up, Between the Sheets, where you would go through the hymnal while the preacher was talking and just surreptitiously see these hymn titles like Abide With Me, and then you’d mentally add Between the Sheets.

Lean on my ample arm between the sheets.

I stand all amazed between the sheets.

It’s sort of like that.

Oh, my gosh.

I’ve got one more version for you, too.

This is at the end of the song.

You want to hear this?

So at the end of the song, you say, cha-cha-cha, ooh-la-la, pizza in the cafeteria.

Scooby-Doo on channel two, Frankenstein on channel nine, Big Fat Lady on channel 80, a whole lot more on channel four.

Oh, wow.

I can’t wait till my birthday.

Are you going to sing that to me, Grant?

Yes, yes.

What’s funny about this is if you Google these, a lot of these came up when I was searching around for this, where teachers are trying to stomp out these versions in their classrooms and utterly failing.

Oh, yeah.

Because they become like a little too much, and they kind of sometimes take away from the spirit of the occasion.

The kids are more interested in the song than they are in the birthday person.

Right, so they make them sing the song really fast so they can’t get all the cha-cha-chas in there.

Yeah, absolutely.

No cha-cha-chas.

Well, something tells me we’re going to hear lots of other versions now that you’ve put it out there.

Yes, I think we will.

And if your family sings the Without a Shirt version, let us know.

We’ll maybe figure out if there’s a geographic center to that.

Thanks so much for your call.

This was a good one.

Thank you guys so much from Indianapolis.

We really appreciate it.

All right.

Take care.

All right.

Take care.

Your birthday song versions to 877-929-9673.

We want you to sing it into the phone.

Or if you must, you can send it an email and text form to words@waywordradio.org.

No birthday suits, please.

Yes, please.

We were talking on an earlier show about dinks and yuppies.

Oh, yeah.

Double income, no kids, and young urban professionals.

Yes, yes.

And Karen, who called us from Fish Creek, Wisconsin, reminded us there’s also silk.

Silk something kids.

Single income something.

What’s the L?

Lots of.

Lots of kids.

Single income, lots of kids.

Yeah.

Those are the hard workers among us.

Very hard.

877-929-9673.

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

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

And who is that handsome gentleman?

It’s John Chaneski from New York City.

Is there a handsome gentleman standing behind you?

Oh, wait.

Oh, it’s me.

You’re so nice.

The quiz has handed to you and you can do it.

That’s me.

Thank you, Grant.

Hi, Martha.

When I met my wife, poet Jennifer Michael Hecht, I learned a lot more about poetry than I knew before.

I mean, I knew enough to know that rhyme is just one of many tools in a poet’s arsenal and that it doesn’t define poetry like some people think.

But I’m not a poet.

I’m a puzzler.

So I use rhyme to puzzle.

I call this quiz a schmoetry.

For example, here’s a famous line of poetry where every word has been replaced with a word that rhymes with it.

Coup fair his lumen, do relive malign.

Can you guess what that is?

Oh, wow.

To err is human, to forgive divine.

Yes, that’s it.

Very nice.

That’s from an essay on criticism by Alexander Pope.

And you guys got that.

Now, how many other famous lines of poetry can you recognize?

Oh, Lord.

None?

Yes, we’ll see.

Now, I’ve left most of the thes and the ands.

I left those alone.

Okay.

Occasionally so.

Oh, good.

All right.

Prose is a nose, is a hose, is a pose.

Thank you, Gertrude.

Yes, give them, tell them what it is.

Rose is a rose is a rose.

Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.

That’s from secret.

Oh, did I not have enough roses in there?

I think you were about two rows short, actually.

That’s from Sacred Emily by Gertrude Stein.

The wild is bother of the van.

The wild is bother of the van.

The child is…

The child is father of the man.

Yes, that’s it.

The child is father of the man.

I mean, I can give you a second if you want to try to say, oh, that’s…

I don’t know who it is.

That’s William Wordsworth, My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold.

There you go.

I’ll give you that.

How about this one?

And tiles to throw a door my bleep.

Thank you, Robert.

And miles to go before I sleep, Robert.

Yes, very good.

Do you know the name of the poem?

Stopping by the woods.

On a snowy evening?

Yes, stopping by woods on a snowy evening, Robert Frost.

Very good.

How about pot with a gang, cut a shrimper?

What?

Pot with a gang, cut a shrimper.

Right.

Not with a bang, but with a whimper.

But a whimper.

Right.

Not with a bang, but a whimper.

Anybody know who the poet is?

T.S. Eliot.

T.S. Eliot.

The hollow men.

Yes.

Very good.

Stuffed men.

Here’s another one.

Now blue, I shove brie, pet me, mount the days.

Count the days is the last part.

No?

Count the…

Ways?

Ways.

I don’t know.

Yeah.

Ways is right.

Count the ways.

Let me count the ways.

What famous line ends count the ways from a poem?

Let me.

It’s, I love thee.

How do I love thee?

Let me count the ways.

That’s it.

By Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Sounds from the Portuguese number 43.

Okay, I’m just going down to the last one.

Rather we clothes, suds, style thee clay.

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.

Yes, very good.

That’s from Robert Herrick’s To the Virgins to Make Much of Time.

Yes.

Thank you, guys.

You were fantastic.

Yeah, sure.

Good stuff.

You’ve got laundry to do, huh?

Yeah.

Thanks, John.

Have a great day.

Sure.

We’ll speak to you next week, buddy.

See you then.

Bye, John.

This is the show where we talk about language in all its glory.

Call us 877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

We’re on Facebook and Twitter at Wayword.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Emerson from San Diego, California.

Hi, Emerson.

Welcome.

I had a question about the word charge.

I work as a nanny, and a lot of nannies spend, you know, full-time days with their kids, and it just seems like a very impersonal word and doesn’t really describe, you know, the love and the care that we have for the kids.

And so I was just wondering kind of where it came from and why we use that term today.

Do you use the word charge then, or you’re looking for a different one?

Sometimes I’ll say charge because other people are saying it, and then sometimes I’ll say, like, my nanny kids.

My nanny kids.

So people don’t think that you’re the mother.

This sounds like a lot of goats.

How many kids do you have?

I have 16-month-old twins.

Twins, nice.

Oh, my goodness.

As a twin, let me say that twins are awesome.

Yes, they are.

And they’re your charges.

That strikes me as a little old-fashioned.

I’m surprised that people still say it.

Yes, they do.

So you’re, what, on the playground or cafe or something with the kids?

Well, when we’re all in person and people ask us, you know, they normally assume that these are our children.

So we’ll say, no, these are our nanny kids.

But a lot of times on online forms, they will say my charges rather than my nanny kids.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, it’s connected to hundreds of years of history where charge has had a variety of meanings related to loads or burdens and then eventually responsibility.

And all of these meanings are, even they go back to Latin roots meaning to carry.

So they’re all connected to having certain kinds of responsibility for something that is not easy to do and maybe is important, if that makes sense.

Yeah. So it has to do with loading, literally.

It’s related to the word cargo.

Yeah, exactly.

And the word carry.

Yeah. And I don’t know if you’ve ever had experience with chargers, that kind of dinnerware that’s a larger plate that goes under a plate.

It’s like a decorative plate.

That’s a charger, same family of words.

Because it’s carrying the burden of the other plates.

It’s carrying the load of the other plates.

That’s really interesting.

Yeah, an electrical charge is the same thing.

There is actually a load.

That’s the jargon in the electrical business.

There is an electrical load on the line.

That is its charge.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

Cool.

Hundreds of years comes to us from French, from Latin before that, related to many, many other words in every romance and Germanic language.

Well, Emerson, that’s what we know about charge.

Thanks so much for your call.

Thank you.

All right.

Take care now.

Thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hello.

This is Ed Delaney.

I’m calling from Nobleville, Indiana.

Hey, Ed.

Welcome to the show.

Nobleville, Indiana?

Nobles.

Yes.

Noblesville.

Noblesville.

Yeah, just north of Indianapolis.

Yeah.

All right.

Welcome to the show.

What’s up?

Well, I was ordering some books online, and I got to the website, and I found my book, and I noticed that on the website they had things like, you know, people that ordered this book also looked at this book and stuff like that.

But what had occurred to me was that when I go to a library or a bookstore and I go look for a book, I go to the shelf and I pull the book out, or maybe the book’s not there, and the first thing I do then is look up and down the shelf to see what other books are physically near the book I’m looking for because a lot of times I discover really cool stuff.

And somebody took the time to organize the books that way, but there’s no similar thing online.

You can only get, you know, recommendations at other people or other things by the alchemist, but I lose that.

So I was really kind of missing that, and I guess my question really was, does anybody else feel that way, that you miss the ability to kind of find things, you know, exciting, interesting things, just because they’re physically near the book you were looking for on a shelf?

Oh, yeah.

The Internet’s sort of a mixed blessing that way, isn’t it?

I mean, there’s something so different about being in a library and maybe going to a section of shelves that you never go to.

And it feels like going into a different world, doesn’t it?

Yeah, online serendipity is a lot more tightly controlled.

And sometimes I don’t want them to use my previous purchases as a guide.

I do want them to throw me for a loop.

And I don’t want the top bestsellers either.

And I don’t want this week’s picks.

I want some really great book from the last 20 years that maybe I hadn’t thought of.

Somebody went through the trouble of cataloging books so that they would be in a particular order in the shelf.

Yeah.

But whatever methodology they use to decide where a book should go, there’s no online analog to that.

You’re right. You’re right.

And there’s also not an online analog exactly to judging a book by its spine.

You know, there’s something about that, about the design of the spine that sometimes catches your eye, right?

Yeah, I feel like even in some of these apps where they’ve made these fake-looking bookshelf interfaces that show the covers of the books, I feel like that’s not enough either.

It’s not the same.

And I think part of it is, particularly in a used bookstore, I’m more likely to look at a well-worn book.

My impression is that somebody loved this book or has been read many times.

I’m far less likely to look at a brand new book because I don’t care about the quality of the cover.

I care about how good it is, and you want the signs that somebody else has been there.

Right.

I also like that if I’m interested enough in a topic to be here looking at this book, there’s obviously a whole lot of other people that looked at the same topic and thought about it enough to write another book about it.

Right.

And I wouldn’t have discovered them any other way.

Right.

We are fortunate here in San Diego to have several really good independent bookstores as well as some chain stores.

How are things in Noblesville?

Can you get to the bookstores and do a little bit of this to satisfy yourself?

There are some good bookstores here.

And, you know, I’m always sad when I see a bookstore close, but there’s some good used bookstores.

And then we still have some of the big, sane bookstores, too.

But I have to schedule my time carefully because it’s always like a day operation.

If I walk into a used bookstore, I have to make sure that I got the day clear because I’m not coming out for three or four hours.

It’s a black hole, yeah.

I’m not just going to pop into a bookstore. It doesn’t matter.

Yeah, my wife always teases me because I’m the guy that goes to the library bookstore where they sell the books that have been withdrawn from circulation.

And she’s like, you’re the only person I know who goes to the library to buy books.

I’m like, well, they’re only 50 cents.

Yep, yep.

Well, Ed, I’m betting that you touched a chord, and we’re going to hear from a lot of people about how they feel about this.

How do you feel about stochasticity, about discovering books on the shelves by random as opposed to looking online?

Let us know, 877-929-9673, or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Ed, thank you so much.

Thanks, Ed. Good question.

Take care, guys.

Take care.

Bye.

Okay, happy browsing.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org, or talk to us on Twitter @wayword.

Remember when we were talking about garage sales and what the verb would be for going from garage sale to garage sale?

Yeah, yeah. Are you garage sailing or are you something else?

Yard sailing, whatever.

That prompted Steve McCarty to send us a haiku that he wrote actually several years ago.

Steve’s from Henderson, Kentucky.

And he sent us this haiku.

Early birds gather near a green sea.

Garage doors billow on the morning wind.

Yard sailing.

Nice.

That’s beautiful.

A nice visual, right?

While we’re talking about that call, I want to thank Sarah Burge for sending me a slotted spoon.

Sarah heard me go on and on about how when I went to thrift stores and garage sales,

What I was looking for was regular, like, tablespoon-sized spoons, but only slotted.

Right.

And she sent me one.

She did.

She found it for a dollar and sent me one.

So thank you very much, Sarah.

I really appreciate it.

What happened to my Halo Kitty vaporizer? That’s what I’m looking for.

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

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, I’m Marvia Davidson calling from Irvin, Texas.

Marvia.

Hi, Marvia.

Okay.

Welcome to the show.

Well, thank you. I have a question about a phrase that I heard when I was probably about 11 or 12,

And we had family friends, adult family friends of my parents,

And the men were drinkers.

And I heard one of the men say one time,

I need something to steady my nerves.

I need a little bit of jump steady, S-T-E-A-D-Y.

So I heard them say that, and I heard it more than once.

And then later on I was watching Triple D with Guy Fieri,

And there were black and white pictures of a diner, and in one of the pictures on the big barrel, it said, jump, study.

So I was just wondering if you’d heard that before, and does it have anything to do with drinking and studying your nerves or studying?

So the picture of the black and white picture from the Guy Fieri show had on the barrel, jump, study, S-T-U-D-Y?

Yes.

Oh, interesting.

I want to focus on the first part, the men sitting on the porch drinking.

That is a long-standing term.

1920s probably.

Jump steady has meant alcohol in Black English since at least the 1920s.

And we’re saying steady rather than steady.

Steady, yeah, S-T-E-A-D-Y.

But, but, there’s a nice but here.

It is also referred to sexual relationship between a couple.

Kind of on the, so if you jumped steady with someone, that meant it’s kind of the next step up from go steady.

It means that you have a regular sexual relationship.

Kind of like, think of jump one’s bones, kind of along those lines.

Yeah.

So there’s always been, in classic blues songs, there’s always been some double innuendo about what jump steady meant.

Look up Lucille Bogan, who had some really raunchy stuff.

And she’s got a bunch of lyrics that use jump steady.

You can either read it to mean alcohol or you can read it to mean a sexual relationship.

Oh, I didn’t know that.

Yeah.

So when somebody says they need jump steady, you should ask for clarification.

Okay.

Now, what about the jump steady, S-T-U-D-Y?

I think that’s just a coincidence or it’s just a play on words based upon the earlier jump steady.

Okay.

What an interesting phrase, jump steady.

I mean, what does that even, does it mean steadying your nerves?

Well, think about this for a second.

So, yeah, so the jump steady is to get like the steady kind of resupply of something that gives you the get up and go, gives you the energy, which is the jump.

Oh, okay.

And then in the sexual version of it, the jump is the act itself.

And then you are doing the act steadily, regularly.

You have an understanding with this other person that this thing is going to happen between you on a regular basis.

Wow, that’s quite interesting.

Yeah.

So what do you think, Marvia?

Well, I don’t know what to think now, especially with the jump study, because the sign was on a big barrel.

It looked like maybe a pickle barrel.

And I thought that perhaps college kids would get together and they said that they were going to study,

But they would be in this diner or whatever it was.

And maybe it had something to do with jumping to the studies.

Yeah, maybe.

Will, if I come across anything new on jump study with a U in it, I’ll let everyone know on the show, all right?

Okay. This has been fun.

Yeah, thanks for the call.

Thank you, Marvia.

Really appreciate it.

Take care now.

And thank you.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Lucille Bogan, look her up.

There’s a ton of stuff on YouTube.

It’s pretty raunchy.

You probably want to put your earbuds in.

Oh.

Yeah.

Not safe for work, huh?

But a lot of it has like double, even triple entendre,

Where you can just say, oh, that’s a really nice song about love.

Or you can say, whoa, what is she singing about?

Is that B-O-G?

A-N, yeah.

B-O-G-A-N.

Lucille Bogan.

I’m on it.

Classic voice, too.

If you hear her, there’s nothing quite like her voice.

Okay, my new Pandora station.

877-929-9673 is the number to call if you want to talk about language.

Or you can email us.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

We have a very active Facebook group, and you can always contact us on Twitter at Wayword.

We got a call from Brandy Noon here in San Diego.

She spells her name N-O-O-N, and she notes that that’s a palindrome,

But she also notes that it’s the same upside down as it is backwards and forwards.

Freaky!

Right?

So Brandy Noon wants to know what you call that.

Is there a word for that kind of word that looks the same upside down and goes back and forth like that?

Do you have an answer?

I do.

There are a couple of names for that.

One is Ambigram, and another one is Invertogram.

Invertogram.

Yeah, and I also found a rather long one.

This is something you might see maybe at a swimming pool if nobody can swim anymore on Mondays.

Now, no swims on mun.

Now, Ambigram is also the one where somebody will cleverly write the letters in a quasi-cursive format

So that it says one thing looking one way, but it’s a different message the other way.

Right.

So it’s not necessarily the same message upside down.

Yeah.

But still a good word.

Yeah, that’s cool stuff.

Still a very good word.

Yeah.

Which reminds me of this weird thing that happened to me in college.

One day I woke up and there was this little piece of metal on my floor that said Zunes.

It was tiny.

And it said Zunes, Z-O-O-N-S.

And I thought, my gosh, what did I do last night?

Why is there something on the floor that says Zunes?

And it took me forever before I realized that I had hit the snooze button on my alarm clock really hard.

And the snooze button.

It was the snooze button.

It was just the top of that.

But it really freaked me out for a while.

Zunes.

Right.

Who came in here and left a secret message for me?

877-929-9673.

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

I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

It’s easy to forget how expensive long-distance communication used to be.

Twitter and email and Facebook are so easy that they seem as good as free.

Text messages are just a few pennies if they cost anything at all.

And do you remember when you had to be careful about long-distance charges

Way back before you had to worry about cell phone minutes?

Oh, my gosh, yeah.

And shh, I’m talking long-distance.

I mean, who thinks about that now?

Because you can’t waste any time repeating yourself, right?

But way back before that, there were telegrams.

And I’m thinking of one telegram in particular, probably the most expensive telegram ever sent.

Here’s how it goes.

In the fall of 1866, William Seward was U.S. Secretary of State.

You may remember him as the fellow who negotiated with Russia for the purchase of Alaska.

Right, Seward’s Folly.

That’s right. They call it Seward’s Folly.

This is his other folly.

Seward was trying to manage a conflict between France and Mexico.

He needed to send a message to U.S. diplomats in France with the goal of getting France out of Mexico.

He wrote a telegram.

And when he first wrote it, it was 780 words.

However, it was converted to a cipher of only numbers.

Then the telegraph company had rules that said all numbers must also be spelled out as words.

Oh, no.

This is to cut back on errors.

Oh, no.

Then, when it was sent, there was accidental repetition.

The final message was 3,722 words long.

Oh, no.

It took six hours to send.

Now, this message did get to France, and the French did leave Mexico.

In fact, it was the first American encrypted diplomatic telegram ever sent.

However, Seward misunderstood how much it would cost.

It was more than $19,000.

Oh, no.

That’s $5 a word.

In today’s money, that would be more than $300,000.

Oh, my God.

It was so expensive that it was more than three times his salary as the U.S. Secretary of State.

And the U.S. Government couldn’t afford it.

They were still paying off the debt from the Civil War.

Oh, my God.

He refused to pay the bill.

And, in fact, the U.S. Government did not pay it until the Telegraph Company sued them and eventually lost the case.

They lost?

The government lost.

The government lost the case and had to pay in 1871.

Can you imagine that if every tweet you sent was $5 a word?

God.

I mean, we take this for granted, but you put this in a picture of a historical perspective.

We are in a really nice place right now.

We sure are.

Maybe communication is too cheap and too easy, but I’d much rather this than $5 a word.

Oh, my God.

But I would say, and I think you’ll agree with this, because we’ve both been freelance journalists.

I would love to be paid $5 a word.

Yeah, that’s pretty rare. My gosh, that’s a lot of dots and dashes. I mean, just the whole thought that they had to encrypt it by changing all the words or the letters to numbers.

Well, that was the encryption code, and it was a well-known encryption code. Actually, the code was so well-known that modern analysts look at this, and there’s a great document on the NSA site, the NSA, about this, and they talk about this particular code as being almost passe at the point.

I mean, it almost wasn’t worth encrypting because the code was so widely known, had it been used for so long, that there really wasn’t any point of encrypting the message.

And to top it off, Seward sent the unencrypted version of it to a local newspaper in New York City that printed it.

And so when those newspapers arrived in France not long after, everyone was able to say, oh, now we know what the encrypted version looked like, and now we know what the unencrypted version looks like.

We can figure out your code.

Oh, no.

Seward had a lot of issues when he was Secretary of State, and a lot of them had to do with trying to reach too high.

Oh, bless his heart.

So how would you like that, a $300,000 telegram?

Oh, my gosh.

This is a show about words and language and ciphers and codes.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Cora Weisenberger.

I’m calling from Chicago.

Chicago.

Chicago.

Yay.

What a…

All right. Welcome to the show.

Thank you.

What can we do for you?

My grandmother always had this expression that I’ve never been able to figure out if she was talking about someone that she thought was kind of rude or pushy.

You would say, he’s got more nerve than a cranberry merchant.

And I never could figure out what that was.

And I’m sure I asked her, but I don’t remember her ever giving me a clear-cut answer.

You know, it could be one of those things of it’s just something her parents said, and she just continued doing it.

So, first of all, what is a cranberry merchant, I guess, other than somebody who deals in cranberries?

That’s pretty close.

Maybe that’s it.

Maybe that’s the only thing.

And why are they particularly nervy?

Nervy.

Yeah, and it was also particularly interesting because, you know, I grew up in north central Illinois in a farming community, but we never raised cranberries.

So it’s just funny that that expression would work its way into a non-cranberry growing area.

So I just always wonder, you know, why does somebody have more nerve than a cranberry merchant?

Well, that’s a good question.

The expression I’ve heard far and away, much, much more commonly than that, is busier than a cranberry merchant.

Have you come across that?

Right. I’ve heard of that, or at least I saw that when I did a little research.

Yeah, and that’s the oldest version, too.

That goes back to the late 1800s.

Right.

For a long time, that is the only version of the expression that you can find.

Right.

Okay.

Well, my grandmother was born in 1899.

Okay.

Maybe she knew some particularly nervy cranberry versions.

Yeah, who was she talking about?

I don’t know.

To my knowledge.

What are these people like that she’s using this expression for?

Like I said, they were usually somebody who was kind of pushy or audacious.

I have said that I think if she was alive today, she’d say that Donald Trump had more nerve than a cranberry merchant.

It was never done in a positive light.

And when I saw the expression about busier than, it’s like, well, that makes sense.

But no, she never said it.

And she never said it like that.

It was always more nerve than a cranberry merchant.

Interesting.

Yeah, I mean, the busier than a cranberry merchant is pretty self-explanatory, I think.

You know, the berries get harvested around Thanksgiving or right before Thanksgiving.

And so you’re frantically trying to get your crop there.

Yeah, and I’ve heard the extension busier than a cranberry merchant at Thanksgiving, which is kind of like busier than a one-armed paper hanger.

Right, right.

Or busier than a cranberry merchant in November, something like that.

Busier than a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest.

Yeah, exactly.

But, yeah, no, it’s always more nerve than a cranberry merchant.

I wonder if she conflated two different expressions.

Yeah, that happens all the time with metaphorical expressions.

We combine them, make our own versions.

We kind of want to own them.

We put our stamp on them.

Well, we don’t know that particular variant of the expression, but we are going to be on the lookout for it.

And if we turn up more information, we will let everyone know, okay?

Okay.

All right.

Thanks so much, Cora.

Well, thank you for giving me the opportunity to maybe find the route to this.

Okay, yeah.

You’re welcome to call us anytime with anything else that your grandmother may have said or anything that occurs to you, all right?

I was trying to think, yeah, about it.

She had a couple that were not too savory, but…

Oh, I love those.

Yeah, those are the ones we want to hear.

Leave those on the voicemail.

Okay, I will.

Thanks, Cora.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Thanks, Cora. Bye-bye.

Give us a call, 877-929-9673, email words@waywordradio.org, or chat us up on Twitter @wayword.

You know, Grant, earlier we were talking about the expressions third wheel and fifth wheel, meaning an extra person.

And it reminded me of a couple of Spanish phrases.

If you’re talking about somebody who’s a third wheel or a fifth wheel on a date, an extra person, you might say that that person toca el violin.

They play the violin.

They play the violin.

Or they carry the harp, the Carga el Arpa, which is, you know, they’re providing the background music.

Right.

So the couple’s sitting there having wine and seafood, and this person’s standing behind them like the entertainment.

Exactly.

Also, it occurs to me, there’s a wonderful German expression that translates as superfluous as a goiter or useless as a goiter.

Yes.

You be flüssig wie ein Kroff sein.

Oh, that sounds…

Doesn’t that sound like…

German is perfect for that expression.

You want to be extra, right?

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Judy calling from Oceanside, California.

Excellent.

What would you like to talk with us about?

I was calling to ask questions about naming conventions, in particular along maternal lines.

What would you like to know?

Well, I’m just wondering if there are any that you know of.

I’m familiar with mostly naming after your father’s last name.

And in my family, I have a sort of system where I’m named after my grandmother, and my mother’s named after her grandmother.

It skips a generation then?

Yeah.

Yeah, I’ve heard of that before.

I think it’s kind of a way to, I don’t know, it seems a little weird sometimes to name your daughter after yourself, even though I think with boys it’s a lot more common and usual.

But this way, you’re not naming your daughter after yourself.

But it does follow a little bit of getting your name passed down along your mother’s line.

Yeah, it is far more common in the United States to name boys after their fathers. Those are called patronyms, by the way, particularly in the South and the American West. And it’s related to basically the patriarchal society that we live in, where a far higher value was placed on the male lineage than on the female lineage.

But it hasn’t always been the case. And something that surprises people when they find it is that when women are named after their mothers, they can take the junior at the end of their name as well.

Oh, I’ve never seen that. Yeah, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s daughter, her name was Anna Eleanor Roosevelt. Actually, that was Eleanor’s full name, too. And she had a junior after her name, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Jr. And interestingly, Eleanor Roosevelt’s mother was named Anna Rebecca Hall Roosevelt. So at least the first name was the same, right?

Yeah, Anna was their first name. And because they were related, they were like second cousins or something. She came with the Roosevelt name. Am I remembering correctly?

I don’t remember that. I don’t remember either. In any case, Judy, yeah, there aren’t that many traditions in our society for naming girls after their mothers, but it’s not unheard of. And certainly there’s no reason not to do it if you like a name.

Yeah. In Kentucky, when I was growing up, I did know three generations of Polly’s. Polly’s. And they didn’t formally use junior and senior, but informally they did around the house. There is a really interesting academic paper that you might hunt up. I don’t know if it’s in full online, but you can search for it. It’s called Naming Patterns Reveal Cultural Values, Patronyms, Matronyms in the U.S. Culture of Honor. It’s by Ryan P. Brown and some other authors. It’s from 2013.

They point out that we rarely name girls after their mothers in this country except for the name Elizabeth because Elizabeth has so many different possible nicknames and shortened forms that it makes it a lot easier to feel comfortable about not having that confusion of the same name.

Right. Liz, Lizzie, Beth, Lisa. Yeah, right. Interesting. Judy, thank you so much for your call. We really appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Nice talking with you. Take care now. Bye-bye. Take care. Bye-bye. Bye.

Call us with your language question, 877-929-9673, or send a tweet to WayWord. Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Luke from Dallas, Texas. Hi, Luke. How are you doing? Good. How are you? All right. Welcome to the show. What can we do for you?

I was wondering why we say here, here to cheer people on and celebrate things, and they’re there to calm people down when something goes wrong. You’re here and they’re there. What do you think is happening here, Luke?

I don’t know. I know it has nothing to do with distance. That was my first thought. Okay, good. Clearly, that really shouldn’t come into it. I don’t know if maybe they both came from longer sayings and they got adapted into something shorter because we’re lazy speakers or if there’s a longer history to that.

That’s a good guess, too. Let me ask you, Luke, how are you spelling here in here? I always spelled it here as in like, it’s right here, H-E-R-E. Aha. Aha. Well, there you go. Because actually, it’s H-E-A-R. Here, here is a shortened form of hear him, hear him, you know, sort of an imperative to listen to this guy. He’s got something to say.

The there, there is really interesting. And I’m not sure I’ve ever quite figured this out. It’s a soothing thing to say, right? There, there. And I don’t know. The best that I can figure is that it’s a comforting thing. I mean, it’s sort of like there, there, I just kissed your boo-boo, you know? Like there. Oh, here now, honey. Let me give you a hug when you’re feeling badly, right?

Yeah. There’s a notion there with the there that although it’s not exactly directional, you’re pointing to something you’re about to say or to do that will make them feel a little better for whatever’s gone wrong. Right, a pat on the head, a kiss on the boo-boo, that kind of thing. But it’s not so clear, right?

No, and it seems to be related to the there, I’m finished. Yeah. Right, so it’s just a drawing. There you go, now you’re fixed. Yeah, drawing attention to something that is significant that will change your understanding or point of view or feelings. Yeah, interesting.

That repetition is interesting, too. I mean, I’m thinking of now, now, there, there. Yeah, the idiomatic nature of that, Luke, of there, there, that’s part of the problem. Idioms tend to grow opaque over time and lose their connection to their roots, and they become mysteries when we try to break them down into their pieces.

Yeah. See, I’ve never actually used that to calm somebody down. I use it sarcastically with my girlfriend when it’s okay when she messes something up. But I don’t actually know anybody who uses it to calm people down or say things are okay.

Yeah, I think it’s the same in my house. I have one of my cats, Whopper. He’s a big 18-pound black-and-white cat. And when he wants to be petted, he will touch you with his paw, and it looks exactly like he’s trying to comfort you. And that’s the joke in our house, which is Whopper saying, there, there, Papa. It’ll be okay.

I almost think of there, there as being more of a Britishism. Oh, really? Yeah, I don’t have any information on that, but it’s possible. Well, we’ll hear from our British listeners if that’s the case. Hear, hear, Luke. That’s very good. That makes a lot more sense now that they’ve been split, too, that they’re not related.

Yeah. Just a coincidence. All right, cool. Thank you very much for your call, sir. Yeah, no problem. Have a good day. All right. Take care now. Bye.

877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org. Find us on our very active Facebook group and talk to us on Twitter at the handle W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

We talked on an earlier show about the expression at bay. You remember this, Grant, when we were talking about keeping something at bay, keeping something at a distance? And we heard from Bea LeCalf, who lives in Spokane, Washington, and she thought that our explanation needed a little bit more tweaking when we talked about a hunted animal that’s pursued by baying hounds. And her description of what this term really means was actually poetic and powerful. I wanted to share it.

She says, the point is, as long as the hunted prey can keep the hounds or snarling wolves at bay, that is, holding in a circle and baying rather than closing in for the kill, then the prey animal wins. It is such a poignant moment of bravery, the prey puffing itself up with ferocity, clearly determined to do its best to take out every one of its tormentors, creating its own safe circle, but not for long.

Oh, nice. Isn’t that powerful? Yeah, that’s great. Outstanding. What was her name again? Yeah, Bea LeCalf. Thanks, Bea. That’s wonderful. Yeah.

877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org. Do you want more A Way with Words? Listen to years of past episodes at waywordradio.org or find the shows in any podcast app or on iTunes. The toll-free line is always open, so leave a message for us at 877-929-9673. We love to get your emails at words@waywordradio.org, or you can hit us up on Twitter @wayword, 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 to each other and the way we think about language, and you’re making it happen. Thanks also to senior producer Stefanie Levine, director Colin Tedeschi, and editor Tim Felten in San Diego. In New York, we thank production wizard James Ramsey, quiz guide John Chaneski, and that master of keeping it real, Paul Ruist at Argo Studios.

A Way with Words is an independent production of Wayword, Inc. From the Recording Arts Center at Studio West in San Diego, I’m Grant Barrett. And I’m Martha Barnette. Bye-bye. So long. Thank you.