Lasagna Hog (episode #1568)

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 I have a movie recommendation that’s going to appeal to every word nerd. It’s a brand new movie. It’s called The Palindromists, and it’s a documentary about the 2017 World Palindrome Championships. Of course, as you know, a palindrome is a word or a phrase or a sentence that reads the same forward and backward, like Madam, I’m Adam, or No Lemons, No Melon.

And the World Palindrome Championship is organized and emceed by our friend Will Schwartz, who’s editor of the New York Times Crossword Puzzle.

And this film features some of the best palindrome creators out there, like Mark Saltvide, who’s the founder of the Palindromist magazine, and John Agee, who’s author of such palindromic books as Go Hang a Salami, I’m a Lasagna Hog, and So Many Dynamos.

And you get to follow the top competitors as they prepare for this contest, which takes place at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. Of course it does. Of course it does. It’s like Nerd Central.

What’s fun is that the championship itself is a real nail-biter because the top contestants have limited time to come up with original palindromes that adhere to any of several constraints. Like on a particular current events topic or on a particular movie, or maybe the first and last word of the palindrome have to be from a foreign language.

And what’s really fun is that they do this in front of a whole audience, and the audience votes by holding up paddles that say, Wow, on one side, which is a palindrome, and huh, on the other side, if the palindrome doesn’t make a lot of sense. H-U-H, another palindrome. Nice.

You get instant response. Boy, you know you’ve really stunk up the room if you get a lot of songs in your direction. Yeah, and that happens sometimes, and it’s painful because, you know, a really good palindrome is going to be something that makes sense and conjures images.

It’s a wonderful film. It’s really entertaining, and it answers some of the questions that you might have, like who are these people, and how do they do what they do, and why do they do what they do?

Oh, and the winner gets a check for, of course, $1,001 because that’s a palindrome. Yeah, we watched it in my house and my 14-year-old son, Guthrie. He also enjoyed it. And we immediately got interested in palindromes and started looking up palindromes and talking about how to make palindromes.

So it’s a family movie, too. It’s great fun. And there are clips from it on YouTube if you want to take a taste of it or you can find more about the movie. I believe the website is thepalindromists.com.

Yeah, and we’ll share some more later in the show. This is a show for word nerds. This is a welcoming environment. We talk about all aspects of language, and we welcome your calls 24-7, toll-free in the U.S. and Canada, 1-877-929-9673.

And we’ll take your emails from anywhere in the world, words@waywordradio.org. And, hey, talk to us on Twitter @wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello. How are you?

Great. Who is this?

This is Sam. Is this Grant?

Yep, sure. This is Grant. Where are you calling from, Sam?

Nice to meet you. Abilene, Texas.

Well, welcome to the show.

I’ve always wondered, because my mother, when I was little, we’d be in the grocery store, for instance. And she’d get me out of the toy section, and we’d go to the checkouts, and I’d be bored to tears. And leaning up against her, she’d gently push me away, and she’d always tell me, lean on your own dinner.

Well, my thoughts were, Mom, I’m not going to eat you. So what do you mean? I know she didn’t want me to lean on her. But I was just wondering if anyone had ever come across that, if anybody else was told that when they were little to lean on their own dinner.

Lean on their own dinner.

So you’re hanging on to your mama and she says, lean on your own dinner.

Right.

Is that on here?

My grandmother and my mother both said that.

Yeah.

Your grandmother, too. Okay.

Yeah, Sam, it’s not just their phrase. This goes back to, gosh, at least the 1880s in this country. And it’s really picturesque. I mean, think about it. You’ve had your dinner a little while ago, and you’re digesting and minding your own business, and then maybe somebody rests their head on your shoulder, and now you’re supporting some of their weight as well as your own.

One of the earliest examples I’ve seen is something from a newspaper in the 1880s, 1884, where a couple is on the train, this elderly couple, and the elderly man leans on his wife, and she’s overheard to say, you old baby, you can lean on your own dinner.

Okay.

There’s a story from later that year in 1884 where there’s a city slicker hitting on a country girl on the train. He’s trying to mash on her, as they would say back then, and he’s kind of like hanging on her, literally hanging on her, and she’s like, lean on your own breakfast. I didn’t eat enough for both of us. All I ate this morning was four biscuits and two pieces of ham, two potatoes, and nine slices of fried mush, and I don’t feel like holding you up.

So just kind of emphasizing the corn-fed nature of the pretty country girl.

Yeah.

Well, okay, well, good.

I don’t feel so isolated.

Yeah.

No, you’re not, Sam.

All right.

Well, Sam, do you have a family of your own that you’re passing that on to?

I do have family of my own, but I don’t know if I’ll pass it on or not.

Oh, yeah.

Got to pass that one on. The good thing is you’re passing it on to listeners around the world. So thank you for that.

Here you go.

Okay.

Thank you, Sam.

Take care now.

Bye, Sam.

Bye-bye.

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

A person in that new movie about palindromes that you might recognize is Danica McKellar. She played Winnie Cooper on The Wonder Years a long time ago. She makes a charming appearance in this movie and talks about her favorite palindrome that she ever came up with, which is tons of UFO snot.

Yeah, there’s a wild scene where she shares it with Jimmy Fallon, and she’s so eager. She’s literally on the edge of her seat, blurting it out before he can guess it because she’s just so excited to share it.

These people are passionate. I’ll say that. You know the aliens have been here. When you wake up in the morning, there’s a big circle of tons of UFOs not on the lawn.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, I’m Everett.

Hi, Everett. Where are you calling from?

Tallahassee.

Tallahassee, Florida.

Well, welcome, Everett. We’re so glad to have you. What would you like to talk with us about?

I needed to ask you what does the word boo-boo mean?

What does the word boo-boo mean?

What a great question.

Mm—

What made you ask about boo-boo, Everett?

One day I just thought of, I wanted to know what does the word boo-boo mean because I just didn’t know yet.

Yeah. Did you fall down and scrape a knee or something?

Just like a few days ago I did that.

Yeah.

And how is it now? Is it a scrape or a cut or what is it?

It used to be much worse, but now it’s getting a little bit better.

Oh, okay. Well, I’m glad to hear that.

So, yeah, the word boo-boo is a word that means an injury or like a cut or a scrape. You know, usually boo-boo is a word that, you know, parents will use with their kids. You don’t usually hear like the president of the United States say, I have a boo-boo on my finger, do you?

No.

Right.

So it’s like usually a mom or dad or another adult who wants you to know that they see that you’re hurting and feel sorry for you and try to make you feel better, right?

I see.

Yeah, so we use the word boo-boo as it’s probably a form of baby talk. Like think about the words night-night or choo-choo. Boo-boo is another one of those words. It’s a sweet word that you would use with a child to make that child feel better if they have a hurt.

I never knew that.

Well, you do now, Everett.

And it sounds a little bit like the sound that you make if you’re a little bit hurt and you cry.

A little bit like boo-hoo.

We kind of make a boo-boo blubbering sound.

So maybe when people first came up with the word boo-boo, they were thinking of boo-hoo and that little noise we make when we first kind of go and cry a little bit when we’re hurt.

Oh.

Yeah, so boo-boo is a word that people would use to comfort you and make you feel better.

Did it make you feel better, Everett, when they said that?

Kind of.

Kind of.

He’s a tough guy, Martha.

We sure hope your boo-boo gets better really fast.

Okay.

And thank you for talking with us today.

We really appreciate it.

How old are you, by the way, Everett?

I am seven.

Oh, seven.

Well, I got to tell you, at seven years old, that booboo is going to heal super fast.

Take care of yourself and call us again sometime, okay?

Okay.

Bye-bye. Be well.

Bye.

Bye.

Martha, I appreciate the calls from kids.

It takes a lot of guts to get on the phone and call a stranger and satisfy that curiosity to get that answer.

I can’t imagine doing that when I was seven.

Oh, no, me neither.

I would barely talk to some of my relatives who were around all the time, much less a stranger with no face on a phone.

Yeah, but you can tell Everett is a bright, curious young man, and we love to hear from kids like that.

Active, too, running around, scraping his legs.

Well, we welcome calls from everyone from ages 70 to 770, 877-929-9673, or talk to us on Twitter @wayword.

I was talking earlier about this movie that I’m so excited about that has to do with palindromes.

And the title of the movie, as I said, is The Palindromists.

But a lot of people don’t like that pronunciation, it turns out.

It’s sort of a mini-controversy in the palindrome world.

Yeah, that’s right.

Will Shorts, the NPR puzzle master and the crossword puzzle editor for the New York Times, insists that it should be palindromist because he thinks the other way, palindromist, is pretentious.

Yeah, snooty.

And a bunch of other people in the palindrome community agree with him.

But other people agree with Mark Saltvites, the editor of the online magazine The Palindromist.

So I don’t know which way to go.

I think I prefer palindromists, but there is something fluid about palindromists. That’s kind of lovely.

Yeah, it’s sort of flutist versus flautist, right?

But I’m in the palindromist camp, and I looked it up in the Oxford English Dictionary, and both the British and American pronunciations that they offer are palindromists.

They don’t even allow for palindromist.

But, I mean…

Yeah, that’s what Will says in the movies, that dictionaries say palindromist, but then he kind of rolls his eyes and scoffs.

But he’s an expert at things.

He’s used to the reference works around him not being up to snuff.

Well, you know, maybe it’s appropriate that a word like that describing people who play with palindromes would go both ways when it comes to pronunciation.

Well, it makes me wonder about anagramist.

Anagramist?

Anagrammers?

Anagrammers or anagrammers.

I don’t know.

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 on the line from New York City is our quiz guy, John Chaneski. Hi, John.

Hi, Grant. Hi, Martha. You know, I so miss going to the movies. It’s been such a long time since I’ve been in the movie theater. I’m really looking forward to doing that again soon.

I have a great respect for screenwriters and directors. Besides having mastery of plotting and characterization and such, they have to know when they’re going down the wrong path and when to make a course correction.

For example, it’s not very well known that in the original version of a beloved Pixar film about an old widower and a young boy, their adventurers take them into caverns deep below the surface of the earth.

It was probably a good idea that they changed the concept of the movie down to the movie up.

Up.

Got it?

Okay.

That’s what we’re going to do.

I’m going to give you movie opposites.

How many of these movie opposites can you figure out from the descriptions?

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

Let’s see.

All right.

Cary Grant is chased by good guys and bad guys, but instead of ending up at a national monument in the Dakotas, he ends up at Disney World.

South by Southeast.

South by Southeast.

That’s right.

Instead of North by Northwest.

It’s 1957, and on a comfortable, temperate day, a jury sits and quickly decides a simple and easy court case.

Everybody goes home to their families.

12 Happy Men.

12 Happy Men.

A really short movie.

They changed it to 12 Angry Men, and it was much longer.

In an alternate universe, two reporters are unable to find any evidence that anyone in the Nixon administration had anything to do with the break-in at the Watergate complex.

None of the president’s men.

None of the president’s men.

Absolutely none of them.

Instead of all the president’s men, right?

Jimmy Stewart has an uneventful two-week recovery, spying on people coming and going on his Greenwich Village street, completely ignoring anything that happens in the backyard.

Front window.

Front window instead of rear window, the classic Hitchcock film.

Yes, he should mind his own business.

A disparate group of high schoolers really get to know each other at a fancy restaurant.

Dinner club.

Yes, the dinner club, as opposed to, of course, the breakfast club.

Finally, this 2010 film tells how Facebook allowed misanthropes to distance themselves from everyone throughout 2020.

The anti-social network.

Yes, the anti-social network instead of the social network, of course.

Thanks, John. Really appreciate it.

Thanks, you guys. Talk to you next time.

Thanks, John. And we invite you to get in on the conversation.

Just call us 877-929-9673 or send your emails to words@waywordradio.org.

Hi there. You have A Way with Words.

Oh, God. Hi. This is so exciting and surreal.

My name is Toshi. I’m currently in Dallas, but I lived in New York for like ever.

One of those globe hoppers. I’m 27. And so I was like pretty much raised on the internet.

And you know, I’m a millennial, as you could say. And so a lot of my friends and I, just people in general notice that not to be ageist or anything, but people of different generations tend to use like an ellipsis, or they use like, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, at the end of their text messages.

And to us, it seems like they’re upset and they’re being passive aggressive and it really freaks us out. And we’re like, what did we do wrong? Oh my God.

But to them, you know what I mean? Like to them, they just put it in every single text message.

So I was wondering, you know, what’s up with that? The only guess that I had is that maybe it comes from like when people were writing letters and it takes a long time to get back you know you put an ellipsis because there’s that whole to be continued kind of feeling but in a text message it’s instant so it just seems like you’re mad at me and I don’t like that.

So you know where did that come from and like I’ve been scolded for using an ellipsis wrong in school, but then y’all are going to use it when you’re telling me that it’s someone’s birthday.

So if you could elaborate, that’d be amazing.

All right. So you’re, you’re texting with your friends and tell me when you would use an ellipsis. What’s going on when you use an ellipsis and they take it to mean that you’re upset? How does that work?

Okay. So if I’m texting my friends and I use an ellipsis, that’s when there’s a little bit of mystery or I’m spilling some tea, as they say, and there’s drama or I or I am being passive aggressive.

And I’m like, so dot, dot, dot, how are you?

You know, that means I’m a little pissed.

But then when I’m texting my mom, you know, my mom says, hi, dot, dot, dot, how are you? Dot, dot, dot, you haven’t called me in a week, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot.

Then I’m like, oh, my God, she’s so mad at me.

And, you know, I just think some people don’t seem to understand that when they use so many dots, the more dots, the more upset you seem.

So where did people learn that from?

It’s so interesting to me because the dots, the ellipses, is still retaining some of its older use.

The idea of the pregnant pause, the idea that in this moment when we pause, this is a carryover from print, as you said.

So they are just using it wrong.

Is that what you’re saying?

No, no, no.

I’m saying your generation is still using it one of the old ways, and the other generations are still using it the old ways, too.

It’s just that the ellipsis and the dot, dot, dot, because we’ll talk about that in a second.

But it’s just that the ellipsis has had more than one use.

It’s never been just one.

Sometimes it’s about taking text out.

Sometimes it’s about slowing down the pace of a text.

Sometimes it’s about indicating something has happened in between, but I don’t want to get into it.

Sometimes it’s about a dramatic moment.

I thought that perhaps when I’m texting with the older generation and they use that dot, dot, dot, perhaps they mean that there’s a lot going on in between.

That’s what I meant when I said perhaps it comes from the letter writing, and that’s why they use it so much, because it’s like there’s a lot going on around us that you’re missing, and that is represented here, dot, dot, dot.

Whereas I think that my generation tends to only use it as that pregnant pause type of situation.

I can see that.

I definitely can see that.

So you’re saying that it’s like the written equivalent of so when somebody says something really awkward and you just want to change the subject.

You’re just like rolling your eyes a little bit going like so because you don’t really even want to address the awkward thing they just said or did.

And you can just hear the ellipses when somebody talks like that.

But I want to recommend a book to you.

We’ve talked about it on the show before.

This is Gretchen McCulloch’s book, Because Internet.

She has whole big sections about the friction that comes between these different cultures and how they use ellipses versus dot, dot, dot.

And she specifically uses the two different terms for this.

She calls ellipses one thing and dot, dot, dot another because as far as she’s concerned, they are different.

Yeah, they’re different kinds of punctuation.

And another thing that she is careful to say is that it’s not really generational.

It’s about different internet cultures.

I feel very awkward saying generational.

Yeah.

There are people your age that don’t get it, Toshi, and there are people my age that get it.

So it’s about who you hang out with on the internet.

It’s more about shared interests and tendencies and your overall communication aptitude in general.

And it’s also about context.

That makes a lot of sense.

Are you texting or are you on Instagram or Discord?

Is it a dating app or a work-related app?

Is there the other person is typing indicator or not in the app they’re using?

All these things affect how your punctuation is going to be interpreted.

So context matters.

You’re giving me social anxiety just talking about this.

Toshi, another cool point that Gretchen McCulloch makes in that book is that, well, I’m wondering when your mom writes you and says, hi, sweetie, or whatever, dot, dot, dot, and then says some more and then uses dot, dot, dot again.

Is that all in one text?

It is in one text.

And sometimes I’ll find that people will put it in between each sentence.

And I’m like, you just sound like the most hesitant person in the world.

Either you’re shy or you’re super passive aggressive.

Because to me, I think it really does come off as passive aggressive most of the time.

And that’s the biggest thing is it’s triggering all of our anxiety.

And I suspect that what you do instead of using ellipses is you just send five different texts with those five different ideas.

And they’re not separated by ellipses.

They’re separated because they’re different messages.

Is that the way you do it?

How did you know?

You know me.

I read it in Gretchen McCulloch’s book.

And probably with no terminal punctuation, right?

No period at the end.

Right.

Either that or like 10 exclamation points.

Yeah.

There’s an endless supply of those.

Yeah.

Well, Toshi, this is a fantastic topic that you’ve brought up here.

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

I got to say, you seem really plugged in to what’s happening online, and I’d love to hear from you again.

I grew up online.

So, yeah, I’ve got endless questions, and I’m sure a bunch of my friends do, too.

So thank you so much for having me on this show.

Yeah, I’m with you.

Hey, send them our way.

As somebody who’s been online 30 years himself, I’m with you, Toshi. Take care now.

Yeah, thank you so much. Take care. Have a good one.

What else can you tell us about communicating on the Internet?

If you’re part of Toshi’s peer group, tell us how you use punctuation.

Tell us how you use words and slang different than the older generations do.

877-929-9673, words@waywordradio.org, or on Twitter @wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, how are you?

Excellent, thank you. And how are you, and who are you?

I’m Jeannie, and I live in Spring Branch, Texas.

Welcome to the show, Jeannie.

What can we do for you?

Well, I have a question on something that my grandmother used to say.

Her name was Amabel Wallace, and she was born in 1894.

She used to say to me that she was a weed’s widow, which I didn’t understand what that meant.

I know she lived to 89, but her husband was born in 1893, and he only lived to 39.

She had six kids.

And when I would ask questions about my grandfather, she would just say she was a weeds widow.

Even before he was dead, she would call herself a weeds widow.

So I don’t know what that means.

Even before?

Before my grandfather was dead, she called herself a weeds widow.

Where was he if he wasn’t dead? Was he not living with her?

Well, he would come home long enough to get her pregnant, and then he would leave again.

And he was kind of a traveling man.

They were married, but she lived on a farm, and it was just kind of odd that she called herself that.

This is really interesting, isn’t it, Grant?

It sounds like it’s conflating a couple of different ideas.

But it’s getting to something that we know.

It’s getting to a term, yeah.

I think I know where you’re going with this, Martha.

Are you familiar with the term widow’s weeds?

No.

Yeah, widow’s weeds refers to the clothes that a widow will wear in mourning,

You know, black sort of crepey clothing.

It has nothing to do with the plants in your yard.

It’s a totally different word.

The weeds there comes from an old word that probably means something like cloth or clothing.

So we have that term.

But then we also have a term that you may or may not have heard: grass widowed.

Back in the 1500s, a grass widow was a woman who you might describe as having loose morals.

You might have a role in the hay with or in the grass.

Or it might refer to a mistress who’s been deserted by a man.

But by the 19th century, the term grass widow had evolved into referring to a woman who was away from her husband, either because, say, he was away at sea or traveling or because they divorced.

And I’m thinking that perhaps these widow’s weeds and weed’s widow were somehow conflated in her mind.

Well, I got to tell you, Jeannie, this is super interesting.

Thank you for sharing your family’s history and memories.

I’m with Martha.

I think this probably sounds like weed’s widow comes from a mix of the expression grass widow and widow’s weeds.

So it sounds like a real logical extension of the idea of grass widow.

It does.

It does.

Yeah, sure it does.

Hopefully, we’ve got it on the head, hopefully.

Yeah, I think so.

All right.

Take care now.

Thank you.

Have a great day.

Jeannie, thank you so much for calling.

You too.

Bye-bye.

Yes, ma’am.

Bye-bye.

Share your linguistic heirlooms with us, 877-929-9673, or send them to us in email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hey, this is Karen Mulford calling from Memphis, Tennessee.

Hey, Karen. Welcome.

Hi, Karen.

Hi.

So I’m calling about a phrase that my mom uses, typically in reference to my appearance, and that phrase is rig and a half.

Rig and a half?

What do you look like?

That’s it.

Typically, it means I’m maybe wearing mismatched socks or maybe my pants are too short or like I’m wearing a dinosaur onesie to keep warm, you know, that kind of stuff.

You look like me. I get it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

She’ll say, oh, you suck a rig and a half.

A rig and a half.

Very fashionable.

Is that rig like R-I-G, like a rig and a half?

Yep, I believe so.

Wow.

So your mom says this.

What about your mom?

Where is she from?

Who is she?

She is Canadian.

She’s from Timmins, Ontario.

And she said it’s a phrase that she, you know, heard as a kid.

And it was a common phrase to her, but I’ve never heard it.

I’ve never heard anyone else use it.

None of my Canadian relatives know about it.

So, yeah, she says it’s just you use it when, like, maybe someone has, like, a disheveled appearance, like dirt on their face or their hair is messy.

But I always took it to be about my outfit because I always wore silly outfits.

A rig and a half.

So what part of Ontario?

Timmins.

I would have guessed that she was from one of the maritime provinces, Karen.

Yeah.

And the reason I would have guessed that is because in Cape Breton and Nova Scotia and Labrador, they have a word rig, which means an eccentric, odd or humorous person or character.

Oh, that sounds like me.

I think that’s what she was talking about.

I think she was calling you an odd person and a half, not just one odd person, but a whole 50% more.

1.5.

Yeah. And this is a word that goes back to the old world, to England and Scotland, as a matter of fact.

And it goes back to a word meaning, words meaning to play a prank or to mock or to make a fool of or to play a trick on.

An older expression is to run the rig, which is to run riot or to behave recklessly.

And so there’s lots of older expressions. It goes well back into the 1700s.

But it lasted, you know, the heritage of the English as they settled in the New World.

This word just happens when it lasted there.

Is she Canadian?

Canadian?

Where are her parents from?

Her parents are from the same place, but I think her great-grandparents were from Scotland.

A lot of our family’s from Scotland.

So maybe that’s where it came from.

And now it’s in Memphis.

Yeah, I know.

Spreading it around the world.

Anyway, I wanted to tell you about the book where I found an entry for this.

It’s not the only book, but there’s a fantastic book called The Dictionary of Cape Breton English by William Davey and Richard McKinnon.

Really wonderful.

It just kind of sets up the history and the people of this place and really tells you a lot about who they are and where they’re from.

It’s wonderful.

Wow, that’s so cool.

Yeah.

So, Karen, I’m delighted to hear from a kindred spirit, fashionably speaking.

Yes.

Eccentrics have to keep together, right?

That’s right.

Thanks so much, you guys.

I really appreciate you.

Yeah, sure.

No problem.

Thank you, Karen.

Thanks.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Call us 877-929-9673.

More about what we say and why we say it.

Stick around for more.

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

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

I had an interesting linguistic experience the other day.

I had spent the morning reading about conversational styles and reviewing the work of linguist Deborah Tannen, who studied them extensively.

And she was writing about a style of speaking called cooperative overlap, which occurs when the listener starts talking when the other person is already speaking.

Not really to interrupt, but precisely to show that they’re really enthusiastic, they’re really engaged in the conversation.

And that’s in contrast to the conversational style she calls high considerateness, which is marked by more pausing and turn-taking.

And when two people end up in the same conversation and they have different styles, things can get confusing or even frustrating.

Because the high considerateness speaker may feel interrupted or dismissed, and the high-involvement person may suspect that the other one isn’t really interested in the conversation.

And it’s not as if one’s style is inherently better, they’re just different.

And as it happened, that afternoon, I had a socially distanced visit for the first time in months with one of my oldest and dearest friends.

And she and I text and email a lot, but we hadn’t seen each other in forever.

And she’s a longtime New Yorker, and as you might imagine, she’s definitely a high-involvement speaker.

And, of course, I fall into the high-considerateness category.

And I was taken aback because I would start a sentence and literally get six or seven words into it, and she’d start talking over me.

And it’s not as if she’s hard of hearing.

She’s not being rude or discounting what I had to say.

She was actually having a grand old time and showing me that she was completely present and engaged and excited about what we were discussing.

And it was, Grant, it was just sort of this experience in the wild where I had this clicking moment where I realized, oh, that’s what’s going on here.

Yeah, it’s so perfect.

And you and I have that to a smaller degree because I, too, tend to be a high-involvement speaker.

And I’ve learned to moderate it over our years together so that we can make this radio show.

But I get it.

I’m on the other end of that.

I have a friend who now lives in Detroit, but we knew each other in New York City.

And when she and I get together, we can talk for three hours straight, nonstop, without either of us breaking.

We just go.

And it’s wonderful.

I love it.

And few people can keep up with us.

We just sit in the corner talking.

It’s fantastic.

Well, and it is really interesting if you get those two different styles together.

I mean, it seems that one of the things that you can do is be aware of that difference.

And the person who’s the high involvement speaker can bring it down a little bit.

But the other one has to sort of up their game as well.

And I find that.

You know, I find that now I’m trying to jump in more.

Yeah, as a high involvement speaker, what I’ve started to do is when I want to speak as a high involvement and a person who practices cooperative overlap, where I overlap with you to show that I’m with you and that I’m adding to what you’re saying instead of interrupting what you’re saying.

What I try to do when I’m face-to-face is instead of speaking, I’m nodding or I’m doing the yeah, yeah, yeah hand gestures or I’m doing a lot more emphatic body movements.

And that’s the way I’m participating rather than speaking with my voice.

And that’s a real good way to direct my way of showing involvement and my excitement that we’re together and that we’re both on the same page.

And it works, but you have to practice it.

Right, you do.

And I think it’s another example of what we say about if the way that somebody is talking or the words they use bothers you, maybe it’s time to just step back and observe it and think, whoa, this is a specimen.

So some terms that we’re talking about here, just to put some names on this, are high involvement versus high considerateness.

So high involvement is a lot of talk.

You’re talking at the same time the other person is talking.

You’re showing that you’re interested.

High considerateness is when you are turn-taking.

You’re waiting for an opening.

You’re being quiet while the other person is speaking.

And you may never get to speak because they don’t give you an opening.

Two other terms to consider when you’re thinking about your speaking style are cooperative overlap.

This is where you’re speaking while the other person is speaking, but you’re not interrupting them.

You’re adding to the conversation or you’re agreeing with the conversation.

And interruptive overlap, which is where you are interrupting them because you’re speaking while they’re speaking.

And you’re probably trying to take over the conversation.

You’re interrupting to derail them or to own the moment.

And so these four different terms kind of lay out the different positions, the four different main positions that you can have when you’re having a conversation.

There are others, but these are kind of the pinnacle of the conversations that we have.

So we’d love to hear about your experiences as a high considerateness speaker or a high involvement person.

Have you had a conversation with somebody and you just realized that you were speaking in entirely different ways and it wasn’t working out?

How did you solve that problem?

877-929-9673 or send the story an email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi there. My name is Eileen, Eileen Bach, and I am calling from the side of a highway.

I hope that’s okay. I hope you can hear me okay.

You sound great.

Great. So, Martha and Grant, I’m very excited that you may have some information for me about the expression that I first heard 50 years ago, and I really haven’t heard since, so I’m quite curious about it.

When I worked in a nursing home, summers when I was in college, and then again, my first year out of college when I couldn’t find a job, I worked evenings in the same nursing home, where when I would deliver the supper trays, one lovely woman, very cheery, would tell me that she liked her tea barefoot.

And what she meant by that was she did not want either milk or sugar in her tea.

I got such a kick out of that expression.

I could imagine her as a young woman walking through the grass barefoot.

And it gave me a lot of pleasure.

And seeing how cheerful she was and happy she was to have her cup of tea just the way she wanted it.

Nice. And she’s not the only person who has used this term by any stretch of the imagination.

It’s often used to describe tea or coffee that doesn’t have cream or sugar.

In fact, some people like to order coffee with socks on.

And again, they’re not talking about footwear.

They’re talking about, you know, coffee that has the white stuff in it, sort of like white socks, coffee with socks on.

But, yeah, people have used barefoot tea or barefoot coffee since at least the mid-19th century.

Or you might talk about, say, an alcoholic beverage that you’re drinking straight.

You would say, you know, I like my whiskey barefoot.

Is it regional?

I would describe it as slang.

Wouldn’t you, Grant?

Yeah, I would.

I wouldn’t say it’s regional.

I would say there’s some heritage involved.

It comes from England, Ireland, and Scotland into the U.S., so maybe you’re more likely to find it in places settled by people from those countries.

There is a little bit of a region to it.

The Dictionary of American Regional English does say their data shows it is a little more common in the mid-Atlantic U.S., Pennsylvania, south through Georgia, and kind of west through Indiana.

But it’s never been all that much common, and the data is sparse.

And that would fit because this particular nursing home, the Orange County Home and Infirmary in Goshen, New York, is sort of tri-state area near Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

So that would fit that mid-Atlantic region close to Pennsylvania.

Well, that makes sense then, yeah.

Yeah, so Martha, you said mid-19th century, so that puts it around 1840s.

I found one mention of this in Pennsylvania German as well, so it’s not just in English.

Also, bread and dumplings.

Barefoot bread is bread or cornbread made without shortening larder eggs.

So that’s kind of a poor man’s dish, you know, when you’re just kind of flour and water, maybe a little bit of salt.

And barefoot dumplings are made from water, grease, and salt.

These are like the basics, basic dumplings.

And then in the Scottish National Dictionary, we have barefoot broth or soup.

So instead of boiling it with meat so you get the fat and grease from the meat, you put a little bit of butter in there to give it the oil, which is much cheaper than meat.

You might have a barefoot dinner, which is also without meat.

Just barefoot dinner is just bread and vegetables, I guess.

My goodness, I’ve never heard of any of this.

And I’m fascinated to hear this.

The only thing I would add that supports what you’re saying is at the time, and I’m going back 50 years now, but the Orange County Home and Infirmary was meant for indigent folks who had nowhere else to go in their old age.

So that kind of fits that whole idea that someone who has been raised with the basics and without any frills, such as cream and sugar.

Yeah, it generally does come from people who’ve had a poor upbringing or a thrifty background.

Yeah, well, I am so happy to hear all of this information.

I’ve never heard the expression used by anyone else, and it just delighted me.

So now I’ve got lots more to go on.

We’ll think of you next time we’re sipping tea with nothing else in it.

Delightful. Thank you. Thank you.

I appreciate the time.

Okay, bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Is there a word you heard years and years and years ago, and it’s still rattling around in your mind?

You still wonder, what’s the story behind that word?

We’d love to talk with you about it, so call us 877-929-9673 or send the whole story in email to words@waywordradio.org.

One of the funniest things I’ve read on Twitter in a while came from writer Stu Royal, who was joking that his favorite species of birds are ones that are named by people who clearly hate birds.

He was saying, what’s up with you, ornithologist?

And then he just, one by one, he started listing these bird names like drab seed eater, go away bird, rough-faced shag, sad fly catcher, hoary puffleg, smew, monotonous lark.

I think it was the one with monotonous lark that he said, ornithologists, who hurt you?

I guess when you’re out in the field, your graduate advisor says, all right, I’ve got two fellowships here.

One of you is going to the Amazon, and one of you is going to Canada.

The guy in Canada is like, ugh, I’m so angry.

I’ve got to name all these gray birds.

And the guy on Amazon is like, oh, all these beautiful, colorful birds.

What’s your favorite bird name?

All you horned screamers and fluffy-backed tit-babblers, why don’t you call us 877-929-9673 or tweet those bird names to us at Wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha and Grant.

This is Norm from Livingston, Montana.

My partner Chris and I the other day were eating some prunes, and she came up with the comment on, I wonder why they’re not called dried plums.

Well, that got us thinking about some of the other fruits and vegetables, and we mentally went through a list, like apples and oranges and pears and plums, and we couldn’t come up with any other fruit or vegetable for that matter.

The name changes when it’s dried.

The only exception that we came up with is that of a raisin, which is a dried grape.

So my question, I guess, is why those two words?

How did they originate?

Are they related?

The first thing that comes to mind for me, Martha, is peppers.

Yep.

Jalapenos become chipotle peppers, dried and smoked.

And not always smoked.

And poblanos become anchos.

And I think there’s probably a whole bunch of other kind of peppers on the different hot scales that take on new names once they’re dried.

And other than that, well, craisins maybe.

Craisins is a trade-Nemart name for dried cranberries.

I don’t know if that’s… I don’t know if that’s actually become generic yet.

I don’t think so.

But those are the only ones that I know of for sure.

Yeah, not a whole lot.

But otherwise, we would say like dried bananas or dried apricot.

We have things that aren’t fruit and vegetables like jerky, right?

Dried meat becomes jerky.

Right.

Yep.

I did think of that.

Right.

So where did those originate?

Well, the prune and plum, interestingly enough, come from the same etymological roots.

Prune came into English through French, and plum came into English through early Germanic roots.

Ultimately, they both go back to the same Indo-European word that gave rise to a Greek word that ultimately became a Latin plural word, meaning plums, that later was reinterpreted as a singular.

Now, that’s many centuries of history.

What a road.

And that word was pruna.

Martha, how’s my pronunciation on Latin?

It’s P-R-U-N-A.

Pruna ultimately ended up in some of the Romance languages, including French, where it sometimes meant plum and sometimes meant dried plum.

And that was still true when pruna entered English.

Sometimes prune meant plum, sometimes it meant dried plum up through about the 17th century.

And as a matter of fact, the French still use prune to mean plum.

The English word prune in French is pruneau.

Now, the other word, plum, comes from pruna, the Latin word, because the L and the R sounds are formed in the human mouth in very similar ways.

So over time, they often become each other.

The same for N and M.

So the R in pruna became an L, something like pluna, and the N became an M, giving us plum or pluma.

And similar cognates appeared in Swedish and German, so therefore we know that the word is very old, and we got it from our deep Germanic roots of English.

So these kind of changes of the mix of the R and L and the mix of the N and the M are at the heart of historical linguistics.

These are a very important part of how we know that language changes, and we can trace languages back to the common ancestors like the Indo-European language.

So anyway, that’s the prune plum story.

Raisin’s a little easier, fortunately.

It also used to mean the undried version of the fruit, the grape.

In fact, it still also does in French.

French kind of kept those old meanings for both.

And it’s where English gets the word.

And the French just say what amounts to dried grape to mean the same as the English raisin.

Okay.

Norm, thank you so much for calling.

Take care.

Hey, thank you guys.

We love your show.

We listen to it every week.

And looking forward to hearing it again this week.

All right.

Be well.

Take care.

All right.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Getting back to this movie about palindromes, one of the things I really liked about it was you really get to know some of the people who are obsessed with palindromes.

And one of them is Lori Weick, who is also principal bassoonist for the Utah Symphony.

And she came up with a great one, which is Hadatonic, Cup of Cappuccino.

Ta-da!

Yeah, and she made a shirt for it, too.

Yeah.

Yeah, you have to spell cup as, you know, C-U-P-P-A.

But Hadatonic, Cup of Cappuccino.

Ta-da!

And there’s a wonderful segment where she and one of her music students play palindromic music passages from Bach.

Which require that you play a passage forward and backward at the same time in order for it to be what the composer intended.

And it’s quite lovely.

Both of them have these burping bedposts, as they’re called, and it’s really quite brilliant.

They also have a great shot of her playing the oboe at the spiral jetty in the Great Salt Lake, which is just outstanding.

Just wonderful stuff.

877-929-9673.

Thanks to senior producer Stefanie Levine, editor Tim Felten, and production assistant Rachel Elizabeth Weisler.

You can send us messages, subscribe to the podcast and newsletter, and catch up on hundreds of past episodes at waywordradio.org.

Our toll-free line is always open in the U.S. and Canada, 877-929-9673.

Or email us words@waywordradio.org.

A Way with Words is an independent production of Wayword, Inc., a nonprofit supported by listeners and organizations who are changing the way the world talks about language.

Many thanks to Wayword board member and our friend Bruce Rogow for his help and expertise.

Thanks for listening. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Until next time, goodbye.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.