Off the Turnip Truck (episode #1532)

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 no, texting is not destroying the English language.

And if you want proof of that, then you need to run right out and get the wonderful book Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch.

She’s a linguist who analyzes the language of electronic communications, so tweets and texts and the like.

And Grant, I think you’ll agree that it’s a smart introduction to language and linguistics in general.

And it’s rich with insights about language in the digital age.

For example, she points out that it’s not that writing has completely changed in the digital age, but rather it’s forked into formal and informal versions.

She writes, the Internet didn’t create informal writing, but it did make it more common, changing some of our previously spoken interactions into near real-time text exchanges.

And she explains that in the process, we’ve been developing expanded systems of conveying emotional nuance through text.

In other words, we’ve been crowdsourcing ways to make electronic communication more personal and not less.

For example, take emoji.

It’s not that these cute little symbols always replace words or compete with them.

Many emoji function like gestures.

They accompany speech online, much as we naturally gesture when we’re talking.

Yes, a smiley face in a text can indicate happiness.

You know, yay, I got the job, smiley face.

But depending on the context, the smiley face might supply a more nuanced meaning.

You might add one to a request to make it a little more polite.

Or you might soften a statement that might otherwise be taken as an insult.

In other words, emoji create this kind of typographical tone of voice in a medium that’s potentially impersonal.

And she says, when we learn to write in ways that communicate our tone of voice, not just our mastery of rules, we learn to see writing not as a way of asserting our intellectual superiority, but as a way of listening to each other better.

Grant, you and I have both been recommending this book.

You love it, too.

Yeah, yeah.

Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch is one of the best linguistic books I’ve read in probably 10 years.

You and I are sent bunches of books all the time about language, but this one kind of rises to the top because she does a great job of summarizing the truth about Internet communication rather than perpetuating these myths and these suspicions.

She actually goes out for the data and actually demonstrates again and again and again through history and context and data what is actually really happening.

It’s so smart.

And she’s written it in the casual voice of the Internet, so it’s very readable.

This is not a dense academic tome that you’ll use to fall asleep at night.

This is the rich, funny, well-written, easy-to-read thing that you could do at the beach or do in the morning with your oatmeal.

It’s just fabulously well-written, well-researched, and just highly recommended.

Yeah, yeah.

A lot of it is very funny, very lively.

She has, I have to say, this sort of nerdy delight.

Oh, she’s our people completely.

And I know Gretchen McCulloch, and my recommendation would come even if I didn’t know her.

So that book, again, is Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch.

And you know what?

We should talk about it later in the show.

Let’s do that.

And, you know, if you’ve got linguistic books that you recommend, something you think that Martha and I need to read, we are open for business.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Or tell us about your favorite linguistic books on Twitter @wayword.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Nadine.

I’m calling from San Antonio, Texas.

Welcome.

How are you today?

Doing well.

Great.

What can we do for you?

My boyfriend and I were discussing a word the other day, and we kind of got into a debate.

The word surprise is the word we were talking about because we were talking about how when certain things happen, I said, yeah, well, you can have a bad surprise.

And he looked at me and says, no, you can’t.

And I said, yes, you can.

And I gave him some examples about simple things like, okay, I’m pregnant, and, yeah, that’s a bad surprise.

Or somebody maybe throws a surprise party for you, and you’re not expecting it, and maybe you weren’t prepared.

He insisted that you can’t have a bad surprise, and I disagreed.

So maybe you can kind of…

Well, Nadine, what’s his argument?

What would he have you say instead of a bad surprise?

I really didn’t understand.

If you want to know the truth, I couldn’t understand him because I didn’t know where he was coming from with it.

Maybe he had a sheltered childhood, and all the bad things were kept from him.

Well, you know what? He has an English degree, and I will give him credit.

He’s very, very smart about a lot of words.

But I just disagreed on this because he said that he doesn’t feel that you can have a bad surprise because surprise is not bad.

Right.

And my research, what I have shown is that over time people have associated the word surprise as being good when in actuality it can be bad.

So I just needed some experts as yourself to kind of hopefully give me support or at least clear it up for us.

So often on this show when we’re asked to arbitrate these cases, we’re a little waffly and wishy-washy.

I’m pleased to say that at this point you are 100% correct and your boyfriend is wrong.

That is totally awesome.

And I can prove it.

I’d love to hear more.

I can prove it with data.

Okay, here it is.

We’ve talked about corpora on the show.

These are large bodies of text that are analyzed by computer programs that mark them for part of speech, and you can figure stuff out.

You can actually look at the relationships between words.

And so what I’ve done here is I’ve punched in the noun surprise, not the verb, and I found all of the adjectives that are most often matched with the noun surprise.

And here they are in order of frequency.

Big, pleasant, nice, nasty, huge, unexpected, unpleasant, welcome, hidden, delightful, unwelcome, sudden, shocking, unwanted, utter, rude.

So what we’re finding here, again, tons of negatives there.

Nasty is the number four.

The number four.

And that’s clearly a negative.

Big is arbitrary.

A big surprise.

You mentioned a baby.

A big surprise for a baby coming could be very good news or very bad news, depending on whether you wanted a family.

Right. And so so really any noun in our language can always be graded or adjusted or modified by a modifier, by an adjective or an adverb.

You can do things to any noun. There’s no inherently positive noun that can’t somehow be turned into at least a little more negative.

Right? Words don’t stand alone. It’s all about the company they keep in the language, right?

Context matters. So we can look at a dictionary definition and it will guide us, but really the ultimate meaning of a word is how it is in a sentence.

And so surprise is often associated with negative adjectives, like unpleasant and unwelcome and rude. Nasty.

So I will recommend that you look up the words BYU, as in Brigham Young University, Corpus, and it will take you.

It is a really complicated site that lets you analyze text.

The instructions are there.

You can actually do exactly what I did and look this up.

There’s a bunch of corpora to choose from.

And you can actually match the adjectives to the noun and show him this.

And I think once he sees the data, he’ll be like, oh, yeah.

All right, maybe I didn’t consider this fully.

Maybe da-da-da.

I think he’ll get there.

I think he’ll arrive where you are already.

He’ll catch up.

Well, he’s very much into researching and data and things like that.

So that’s why I figured calling you guys.

In fact, it was his suggestion because we listen all the time.

And it was his suggestion.

He says, you know what? Call him up.

So, you know, I thought I would.

And I got lucky.

And here we go.

Here we are.

So what is owed? Is there anything? We always ask this.

What’s on the line here?

I think I deserve a really nice vacation somewhere.

Oh, nice.

Yeah.

I think it’s about time.

Yeah.

Maybe he’ll surprise you.

San Diego in January, maybe?

Yeah.

January could be a good time.

Absolutely.

All right. Nadine, thank you so much.

Absolutely. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Take care now. Bye-bye.

Take care, Nadine.

All right. You too. Bye-bye.

Here’s a handy word I didn’t know until this week.

MAFTED.

Spell that.

M-A-F-T-E-D. MAFTED. I’m MAFTED.

By your expression and the way you said that means exhausted?

Exhausted particularly by heat.

Any idea of…

Crowds or exertion.

Mafted, any idea of the origin?

Is this British?

Yes, it is a Britishism,

And we’re not sure of what the origin is.

Mafted.

But I think it’s such a wonderful…

I’m just beat.

Right.

Particularly by the heat, which I love.

Mafted.

We’re going to be using that one more and more, I’m afraid.

Yes, in the coming years.

Yes.

Until the world is on fire.

Yes, he was wearing a cardigan there,

And he must have been mafted.

877-929-9673 or Twitter @wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Grant and Martha.

This is Sam from St. Paul, Minnesota.

Hello, Sam.

Welcome to the show.

My question is, growing up, there was an expression that my dad would use with us kids,

And he would say, do you think I just fell off the turnip truck?

Or a variation of that, you know, I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck.

And what he meant by that was, do you think I’m that gullible or that naive and trying to say that he wasn’t that?

And I guess he would occasionally use it for us when we were trying to trick him maybe or didn’t think he knew something.

But he just would use it more in his general day to day conversation, talking about situations he faced, basically to say that he knew more than this other person thought he did.

And so I’m just wondering the history of that, where it comes from, if other people use that phrase, because I’ve only really heard my dad see it.

So I was just curious for your thoughts.

So kind of a synonym for wet behind the ears or I wasn’t born yesterday, something like that.

Yes, correct.

Turnips have long been associated with being exactly that, not too bright, not too swift.

They’ve been associated with what people might describe as naive country folk.

Country folk would differ with that.

But, I mean, as far back as the mid-17th century, there was a book that referred to a poor turnip-eating clown.

It may be because turnips were traditionally fed to barnyard animals.

And if you didn’t have a lot of money, you might subsist on turnips.

And so they’ve long been associated with people who might be described as rustic.

And picture somebody bringing turnips to market, you know, riding on a truck, a turnip truck, literally.

You know, you got a whole truck full of turnips there.

And if you fall off, then you’re somebody who represents the kind of thing that we’re talking about.

So the idea is maybe even more not just driving it, but you’re tagging along.

Your legs are dangling over the back of the wagon, and you arriving into town is a big deal for you but for nobody else.

Yeah, you’re not up in the cab.

You’re back in the back.

You’re a country bumpkin, maybe, and just not savvy to the sophisticated ways of the big town.

Yeah.

So people have been talking about the turnip truck or the turnip wagon.

There’s something nice about the alliteration of turnip truck.

But the guy who popularized it a lot in the 70s that the expression, I didn’t fall off the turnip truck, was Johnny Carson, of all people.

Really?

Yeah.

Was your dad a fan?

Wow.

You know, I don’t know, but my grandpa may have been, and that’s where my dad may have heard it from, so I don’t quite know.

Okay.

But, yeah, it means just what you said, that I wasn’t born yesterday, that kind of thing.

Yeah.

Very cool.

Sam, thank you so much for your call.

Well, thank you so much.

Our pleasure, of course.

Call again sometime.

Good talking with you, Sam.

Good.

Take care.

Thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

And, of course, you and I would both take pains to explain that we don’t think that country folk are unsophisticated or naive.

As people who are ex-country folk ourselves, we renounce that belief.

Right.

Yes.

Exactly.

Some of the wisest people I knew were country folk.

Absolutely.

But the variant, by the way, is cabbage truck.

Just fell off the cabbage truck.

And there’s a bunch of different ways it’s been expressed over the years.

Huh.

I didn’t know that.

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 we’re joined by our quiz guide, John Chaneski from New York City.

Hey, John.

Hey, Grant.

Hey, Martha.

You know, it’s nice and warm here today.

I think of going out and just sitting out in the sun and having a drink,

And that got me thinking about drinks.

And I have a little drink quiz for you, so to speak.

Some drinks have strange or unusual names.

Witness the Alabama Slammer, a famous cocktail made from Amaretta,

Southern Comfort, slow gin, and orange juice.

That’s a pretty unusual name.

Now, I think this rhyming construction is ripe for all sorts of new concoctions

Named for U.S. States.

Okay.

I won’t go into the ingredients.

I won’t go into the ingredients.

I’ll leave that to mixologists.

But in Jackson or Biloxi, you might want to try a cocktail that harkens back to the groovy 1960s

And folks who are part of a long-haired subculture.

Now, what might that drink be called?

It would be the Mississippi Hippie.

The Mississippi Hippie, yes.

I think it’s a perfectly good name for a drink.

Let’s sample a few more.

Why not?

Speaking of the 1960s, we could make a Beatles-inspired cocktail,

Specifically evoking the excessive enthusiasm or obsession of their fans.

Now, this promises to be very popular in Philadelphia or Pittsburgh.

Pennsylvania mania?

The Pennsylvania mania, yeah. Order me one. I’ll have one, sure.

Sometimes a cocktail can make you feel safe and secure,

Like your doting grandma did when you grew up back in Butte or Helena.

Montana…

Nana?

Oh, yeah, there we go.

Montana Nana, yeah.

That’s probably a mocktail.

I was going to say, that actually sounds like a gunfighter.

It probably is, yeah.

Sounds like a gunfighter I want to meet.

Montana Nana, don’t cross her.

Montana Nana, watch out for him.

Some people get talkative when they drink.

Let’s capitalize on that and name a drink for a brief but comprehensive life story

That you might find yourself telling your bartender in Akron or Columbus.

The Ohio Bio.

The Ohio Bio, yes, very good.

Some cocktail names reflect how they’re made or consumed.

In Albany or Buffalo, we could mix a drink using a special utensil, commonly found in campsites, that combines two eating implements.

What would that be?

The New York spork.

The New York spork, yes.

Some drinks are made for consuming at brunch, some for late night imbibing.

Suppose we create a cocktail specifically for drinking at twilight or dusk.

This might go over big in Cheyenne or Laramie.

The Wyoming Gloaming?

Ooh.

Yes, the Wyoming Glowing.

I was trying to do something with Dianne and all and got nowhere.

If we have trouble popularizing our cocktails, we could always try to get corporate sponsorship.

I’ll bet we could entice a longstanding gas station company with a star on its logo to brand a cocktail in Santa Fe or Albuquerque.

The New Mexico Texaco.

The New Mexico Texaco.

As a reminder, do not drink and drive.

We’ll make that one the mocktail, if that’s okay.

Similarly, some already extant drinks just need to be paired with a state.

Now, there’s a pale lager beer made in Mexico that would be very popular, I think, if we branded it to drinkers in Phoenix or Tucson.

The Arizona Corona.

The Arizona Corona, yeah.

I’m going to get to step into the hallway and enjoy a nice Florida corridor.

Don’t forget, whatever you do, please.

That’s nice.

Please, whatever you do, drink responsibly and don’t drive.

Thank you.

Thank you, John.

Chaneski, our Hawaii quiz guy.

Thank you, guys.

We appreciate you being here.

Take care, John.

My pleasure.

See you next week.

We do a quiz every week.

We do a language show every week, and we’d love for you to be a part of it.

877-929-9673.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Sherry from Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Hello, Sherry.

Welcome to the show.

Hi, Sherry.

What’s up?

Hi.

I was just calling to find out a phrase that my grandmother used to say to me all the time.

She said, if ifs and ands were pots and pans, a tinker would have no trade.

And when I was a kid, I used to look at her like, what are you talking about? I didn’t know what that meant. I thought it was interesting. I’d like to know a little bit more about that.

And Sherry, under what circumstances would she say that to you? I don’t know. If you was doubting to do something or you just didn’t want to do something that she wanted you to do, and she would say something like that.

So the expression again is if ifs and ands were pots and pans, a tinker would have no trade? That’s what she’d say, yes.

And Sherry, what’s your understanding of what a tinker is? It’s something that would go from town to town, you know, back in the old days and fix things and sell things to people. Like maybe like a traveling wagon or so, something like that.

Yeah, yeah. Since the 13th century or so, the word tinker is referred to a kind of itinerant craftsman who goes from town to town, as you said, and usually is mending pots and pans or other metal utensils like that.

And the expression, if ifs and ands were pots and pans, a tinker would have no trade. Versions of that appear in various sayings that are basically saying it’s not enough to wish for something. You have to make it happen.

For a long time, people would say, and you might be familiar with part of this, if wishes were horses and beggars could ride, if turnips were watches, I’d wear one by my side. If ifs and ands were pots and pans, there would be no work for tinkers. And in other words, the words just aren’t enough.

If you’re just talking about pots and pans, then it doesn’t give a tinker any work. That’s interesting, yes. Yeah.

Another version is if ifs and ands were pots and pans, there’d be no work for Tinker’s hands. And sometimes parents, if they were trying to get children to do some work, you know, wash the dishes or something, they might say if ifs and ands were pots and pans, there’d surely be dishes to do, which sounds like that might have been more in your situation, right? Trying to get you to do something?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sounds like it. Yeah, that’s interesting. Yes.

We talked on the show before about Dandy Don Meredith, the sportscaster who used to say, if ifs and buts were candy and nuts, wouldn’t it be a merry Christmas? Again, kind of wishful thinking.

I like that. I like that one. That’s funny.

Well, cool, Sherry. Thank you so much for your call. We really appreciate it. Thank you. I love your show. Appreciate it. Take care. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

877-929-9673. I always thought the expression fair game, you know, like someone said it was fair game for being criticized or whatever. I always thought fair game came from the idea of game is, you know, backgammon or checkers or tennis or something.

Oh, I thought of it as hunting. That’s exactly what it is. Yeah, game originally referred to an athletic contest or something like backgammon. In the 13th century, game referred to something like an athletic contest or backgammon. And by the 14th century, it applied to wild animals who were caught or killed for sport. And it was later that sense of wild animals as game that gave us the term fair game, game that may be lawfully hunted.

Oh, so if it’s the right season for it and you have a permit, it’s fair game. Yeah, it’s a legitimate target.

877-929-9673. Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hello, this is Amber calling from Mansfield, Texas. Hi, Amber. What’s up?

A good friend of mine who is English made the leap and came over and moved to the States a couple of years ago. And she was telling me about a couple of experiences she had where people would hear her maybe ordering food or placing an order even at the pharmacy and mimicking her English accent in conversation and saying things like, and a bunch of other stuff. And she just was quite baffled that strangers would do this.

First of all, they were strangers. But then it also got to the deeper point of why do people mimic other people’s accents? So your English friend speaks English from England with an English accent. Born and raised in London, yes.

And comes to the United States, I’m just kind of summarizing here, and just everyday encounters finds that people imitate the voice. Yes. Do they do it in a mocking way or out of curiosity or appreciation? Do you get a sense of why they’re doing it?

Some of the encounters she said she was quite shocked when people did it because they were just really stereotypical English or British phrases like, you know, right to go, mate, ready to have a cup of tea. Cheerio, pip-pip, that sort of thing.

Right, exactly. And then other people just kind of will talk to her and speak using their own dialogue, but just suddenly switch to an English accent in the midst of a conversation. And do you think they’re switching accents on purpose or is it something they can’t control?

I think she’s more puzzled by the people who switch on purpose, and especially the strangers that just kind of flip the switch on and start kind of… I would say it is somewhat of a curiosity thing, but it’s also in a jokey way.

Yeah, there’s lots of layers to this. Without being a part of all of those encounters, we can’t say for sure what everyone is doing, but we can give you some ideas that maybe make it seem not quite as bad at first glance and maybe in some ways worse than at first glance.

The good stuff is it is natural for us to try to imitate the speech of people around us. We want to fit in and we want them to fit in. And sometimes repeating what someone says, even if it’s in your own dialect, makes you understand it more. It gives you more comprehension. And certainly if their voice is very different from yours, restating their words in kind of the same form that they said them can give you increased comprehension.

So there’s a real practical reason. You might even just reflexively, without thinking about it, imitate somebody with a foreign accent or somebody who has a non-American accent. Another reason you might legitimately do it, sometimes, you might also be doing it consciously to get your mind where they are. So it’s not just comprehension, just like, I didn’t quite understand those words, those vowels. Did I really get it? I don’t want to embarrass myself. Sometimes it’s about making your own self comfortable before you react, before you give a response.

So those are the good ways. The bad ways are, of course, obvious, mocking, teasing, joking. Talk to anybody who works at a register in a store, and they will tell you they hear the same 12 jokes over and over. And if you talk to people who are tall, they hear the same jokes over and over. And if you talk to people who are overweight, they hear the same jokes over and over. And you talk to people who are an accent out of water, if we can coin a phrase, they will hear the same stuff over and over. And it’s because many of us speak when we should be silent.

I think this is where probably a lot of your friends’ encounters probably, unfortunately, fall in that latter category. I think you’re right. Thoughtless speech from others who should be silent.

Yeah, that’s a good way to put it, thoughtless speech. And there’s also a matter of stereotyping that’s really annoying, right? If you’re talking to someone from the U.K. and you offer them a brawly because it’s raining when they don’t even use that word.

Right, that’s a fake Britishism. Yeah, or you meet somebody from Texas and you’re like, well, howdy, partner. It’s a diverse place now.

But again, so the other thing I could say kind of middle between the negative and the positive, the middle ground is it’s an overture. So if we can just forget for a second what they said and how they said it and acknowledge that they’re trying to engage us in conversation, sometimes it can take a sting out of it. All they’re looking for is your next move. They’re making an overture and they want one more response from you and you can quickly get away from this awkward situation they created because they didn’t know what else to say.

So that’s the middle between those two.

It’s the bad thing to say, but it is the thing that was said, which will get you to the better part of the conversation quickly, right? You just move past the awkwardness.

It’s kind of like that initial thing is your first date and then everything after this is a successive date where things go better and you actually have a chance at a relationship.

That’s a very generous take, Grant. I can see how this woman would be annoyed.

Yeah, I’m not always that way. I’m not always that way. But I’ve encountered, I lived in France for a year and did my best to speak French. And even friends would imitate my American accent. And it got to where I would imitate Americans speaking American English and crack them up. Because I was imitating them imitating me, over-articulating my words and doing really big R’s at the ends of things. And they thought it was hilarious. But that’s how I handled it. I just made fun of them making fun of me.

I lived in England, too, which is where I met her. And I did kind of the opposite, where I toned down my American accent. Because I didn’t want people to kind of stop me. And, you know, I just kind of wanted to blend in as much as possible.

Yeah, I can relate to that. Having grown up in Kentucky and gone to school in upstate New York and had people look at my feet to see if I was wearing shoes, I definitely, definitely changed my accent.

I think the fundamental thing I think the three of us are agreeing on, and anybody who thought for more than a moment about this is, when you encounter someone who speaks differently than you, the first thing out of your mouth shouldn’t be an imitation of their speech. It should be a greeting, a compliment, some other kind of outreach to them, not remarks upon how they’re speaking.

Amber, thanks for bringing this question to us. It’s a good one. Yeah, I am glad that you took the call. And thanks again for just inviting me to come on the show. I appreciate it.

Our pleasure. Take care now. Y’all have a great day. You too. Bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Call us with your language question, 877-929-9673, or send it to us in email. That address is words@waywordradio.org. And if you just can’t wait to chat with us, hit us up on Twitter. We’re at WayWord.

Hi there. You have A Way with Words. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Who is this and where are you calling from?

My name is Paul, and I’m calling from Cape Cod on Massachusetts. Nice. Hello, Paul. Welcome to the show. Thank you. What’s up?

I have, since I was a kid, many, many, many years ago, have been mystified by the title Commander-in-Chief versus Commander-and-Chief. And I have never found anyone that gave me a straight answer on that. If you could come up with a straight answer as to why it’s in instead of and.

Absolutely. Yes, we can. So you’re saying, why is it Commander-in-Chief, that’s I-N, instead of Commander-and-Chief, A-N-D, right? Yeah, it sounds like a very peculiar title.

It is. What you’re hearing is a remnant of its foreignism. It’s a construction borrowed from French. You know, when the Normans invaded the British Isles and brought all this French over, a lot of the managerial titles and military titles and legal titles were borrowed into the superstructure of the British way of life. And one of those was this whole en chef idea. Somebody could be en chef, meaning there are a lot of people who do this job, but this is the principal one who does this job. So the commander in chief isn’t the only commander, but he is the head commander. And if you think about chief as being similar to chef, they’re the person that runs the kitchen. They are the top most boss. And actually, even in French today, chef often means boss or supervisor or CEO or head of the company. And so it’s just this little French remnant. And you were very observant. You heard that. You heard this like, this isn’t fully English, right? And it’s not quite. There’s like a fraction of a percent there that still has that Frenchiness to it.

Okay. That’s the solution to my problem. Yeah. We have it in one other construction in English. You probably have heard of editor-in-chief. Yes. Okay. Okay. It’s the same. It’s the same construction. That’s not prominent in my mind. When you’re talking about a president, it really came into focus.

Yeah. So editor-in-chief, for publication, there’s tons of editors, but this is the one that matters the most. This is the person at the top of the hierarchy.

Okay. Terrific. Yep. Thank you very much for your information. Really appreciate it. Enjoy the show. Take care. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.

All right. Bye now. Bye-bye. Yeah, you know, and the French, en chef, goes all the way back to Latin for head. Nice. It’s related to capital and all those words.

Oh, cool. So head meaning figurative at the top of a thing, right? That’s cool. There’s something that’s been niggling you and bothering you for a long time about language. You’ve been sitting on it and waiting for a chance to talk about it. This is that chance. 877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org or ask on Twitter @wayword.

The other day, my friend Mark used the expression dial eight. Do you know this expression? Not dial eight as in to grow larger or smaller like an eye, Iris. No? No, no. It’s like dial the number eight.

Oh, no, I don’t know this. What is that? Well, it’s a baseball term. Back in the 70s and 80s, before cell phones, hotels had special lines for long distance. And you access those lines by dialing not nine to get out, but eight if you were going to make a long distance call. And so if a player hits a home run, then his teammates would say, he really dialed eight on that pitch. Because he’s going long distance on the ball.

Yeah, isn’t that nice? Okay, that’s good. That’s a new one for me. Yeah, outdated. Yeah, it’s in Paul Dixon’s baseball dictionary. I double-checked. Send us your stuff, words, at waywordradio.org.

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. When the telephone was invented in the mid-1800s, people weren’t sure how best to start or end conversations on these newfangled devices. If you wanted to greet someone in person in those days, the polite thing to do would be to say something like, good morning, doctor, or good morning, Mrs. Jones. But when a phone rang, you didn’t know the identity of the person calling, or maybe even the time of day where they were. So what were you supposed to say? Alexander Graham Bell suggested answering with, ahoy! And Thomas Edison lobbied for hello. And it’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time when the solution for this was still unsettled. And in fact, early phone books included instructions that suggested answering with a firm and cheery haloa or what is wanted. And they recommended ending phone conversations with that is all. Hello eventually caught on, of course, but it didn’t happen right away. And in fact, some people thought that hello smacked of a superior addressing an inferior, the kind of thing you’d say to summon somebody. And as late as the 1940s, etiquette books still advised against using hello as a polite greeting, whether on the phone or off.

Linguist Gretchen McCulloch says that this disagreement is worth remembering when we think of how other forms of greeting are evolving as we use more and more electronic communication. For example, the term, hey, young people tend to be fine with greeting each other that way. I’m fine with it. But there’s still some older people who bristle if you address them with, hey. And there’s also this lingering generation gap around technological interruptions. And in her book, Because Internet, McCulloch writes, younger people find that responding to a text message in the company of others is reasonable because you can integrate it into the pauses of the conversation. But unplanned phone calls are a gross interruption because they demand your attention instantly, completely, and unpredictably. And on the other hand, older people are perfectly happy to interrupt or be interrupted by a voice call because they’re unexpected and therefore urgent. But find the sight of someone texting an imposition precisely because you could have put it off until after the conversation entirely.

And she offers some helpful advice for navigating all this that I think we can all take.

She describes it as a call to humility when we’re thinking about language.

She says, if conversational norms are always in flux and different at the same time among different people, let’s not be over hasty to judge.

Let’s ask clarifying questions about what other people mean rather than rushing to conclusions.

Let’s assume that communicative practices which baffle us do have genuine important meaning for the people who use them.

We don’t create truly successful communication by winning at conversational norms.

We create successful communication when all parties help each other win.

Oh, she’s Gretchen.

Right?

She’s so fantastic.

It’s a manifesto for our show, right?

It is.

It’s very similar to what you and I have been saying because we’re part of the larger linguistic community.

But Gretchen has this fantastic way with words.

She does.

Phrasing what is widely understood in sociolinguistics in a way that you can use it and apply it to your daily language.

Yeah, great example of it.

So the book is Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch.

We both highly recommend it.

And we’d love to talk with you if you’ve read the book and have comments about it or you want to talk with us about any other aspect of language.

Call us 877-929-9673 or send your thoughts and email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha.

Hi, Grant.

This is Dane.

I’m calling from Los Angeles, California.

Hi, Dane.

Welcome to the show.

What can we do for you?

Well, I’m a high school teacher in Los Angeles here, and a lot of teachers at staff meetings and around campus have different opinions about high schoolers and teenagers using profanity.

And I know Grant has a child who’s close to high school age.

And he’s 12.

You guys have studied language.

And I was wondering what your guys’ opinion was about teenagers using profanity as they develop their language and sort of their own personal vocabulary.

And, Dane, do you mean using it in the classroom or with each other around the hall or what?

I mean profanity in a broad context.

But teachers definitely have different rules varying based on how they hear students use it.

I think it’s sort of unavoidable in some aspects of students socially within their friend groups.

But I know it also bleeds into the classroom context as well.

And teachers have different rules about how they enforce that in their own rooms.

And I was hoping to see if maybe there was some sort of consensus or advice that you could give.

So the next time the topic comes up, maybe I have something to contribute.

You tipped us off to an important thing here.

It sounds like teachers each have their own different levels of acceptance in each classroom.

So these kids are having to negotiate multiple relationships with adults where maybe it’s allowed at home or allowed with a certain uncle or family friend.

And one teacher, maybe the gym coach is a little more forgiving and the science teacher isn’t.

I don’t mean to stereotype professions, but I’m just saying.

And so they’ve got to negotiate that.

And they’re at a point in their life where they’re negotiating everything, figuring out who they are and what they want to become and what friends are like and what romance is about.

And it’s a real awkward time for them.

So the more of this decision-making we can make easy for them, the better off we’re all going to be.

So here’s what happens in my house.

My son is allowed to curse, but he’s only allowed to curse if it’s not about other people.

And he cannot use offensive language about individuals, and he never does.

So it can’t be about insulting or slurs against people.

It can’t be about criticizing somebody in a way that makes them feel diminished or small.

And we definitely follow the rule about there’s no punching down.

By that, I mean you do not curse in a way that goes after people who are already in a bad position.

It has to be about momentary anger, like darn it, or shoot, that sort of thing.

We do allow emphatic cursing.

So you can say this is a gall darn terrible situation, something like that.

But none of the rest of it really suits him, fortunately.

He doesn’t really feel the need to express himself through obscene language.

Dane, I’m wondering, are there guidelines provided by your school district?

Our school site has certain behavior expectations, but profanity is just sort of lumped in, I think, and maybe more draconian of just don’t allow it, which I think neglects what Grant was just saying, that there’s different uses and different types and applications of profane language.

And that’s why I’ve sort of disagreed with maybe the fundamentalism of it of just absolute no’s versus absolute yes’s and neglecting the gray area there.

Yeah, there’s a whole range of words. I mean, is it okay to say sucks?

Right, exactly.

With schools and situations like that, because there are all these different standards for all the different adults in their lives, you really do have to do a black and white situation.

You just pretty much say no obscene language, period, because you don’t want to spend your time negotiating.

Is this OK? Is that OK? You just say no.

And you acknowledge that elsewhere the rules might be different.

You just say in this place, in this time with these people, there’s no obscenity.

There’s no taboo language, none.

And it’s just easier for the kids to negotiate and they don’t have to think about it.

They just say, oh, yeah, no, I’m not supposed to say that.

And they move on. And at home might be different or, you know, after school, hanging out with their friends, it might be different.

But simplicity is the key here.

In my house, our rules actually are organic, and they’ve developed over the years.

I remember when my son was a little bitty, he stubbed his toe, and he said one of the four-letter words that he’d heard from me.

And I was like, oh, yeah, I need to work on this.

I need to figure out the relationship he’s going to have with this part of our language.

And we’ve worked on it.

And also that means it’s not something that happens quickly.

You negotiate it over time, and it changes.

The rule that you follow about profanity when you’re 10 is not the same one you should be following when you’re 20 or 30 or 80.

Dane, I’m also wondering about enforcing the rules.

I mean, what kind of consequences do students at your school face if they transgress?

Generally, it’s just a verbal correction of watch your language or watch your mouth.

But I think to touch on what Grant was saying about using it directed at other people, that opens up a lot of discussion about bullying or harassment.

And that’s treated a lot more seriously with suspensions or referrals and whatnot.

Frankly, adults don’t always see the difference between those different kinds of taboo language.

I prefer that term over obscenity and cursing, by the way, because we are talking about more than just the words that become stigmatized.

We’re talking about stuff that, because of its meaning and its cultural implications, carries a lot of baggage.

And so that’s why you avoid some of this stuff.

So this is a really complicated topic.

Dana, I appreciate you posing this question to us because it’s important to have the discussion and so people can come to an agreement rather than outside of the school, just assuming that the world needs to behave as it does inside the school.

These are different arenas.

Yeah, it sounds like lots of opportunities for teachable moments there.

Sure, yeah.

Definitely, definitely.

I appreciate you guys that give me some great advice and some great insight into how I can bring this subject up with my fellow teachers and with my students.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you.

And again, let us know how this evolves at your school.

We’re really interested in your story and how this plays out, okay?

I will keep you guys abreast.

Thank you very much.

It’s been a dream come true.

Take care.

Thanks, Dane.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Have a good one.

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org or tell us on Twitter @wayword.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hello.

My name is Natalia.

I’m calling from Sylvester, Arizona.

Welcome to the show, Natalia.

How can we help you?

Yeah, so I have a question.

But first, I want to tell you a little bit about myself.

I grew up in Ukraine in a small village where we had our own chicken.

But for some reason, my parents and people around me would call chicken drumsticks Bush’s legs.

So apparently after one of the American presidents.

And I remember myself being very confused and skeptical at the time my mom offered legs of Mr. Bush for dinner.

So I decided to call you guys and find out the origin of this phrase.

So just to recap here, you’re from Ukraine.

And when you were growing up there, the chicken was sometimes called Bush’s legs?

Not the chicken itself, but the chicken drumsticks.

The drumsticks. And this was after an American president?

Yeah, exactly.

Okay, very good. And now you live in the United States in Arizona.

Yeah.

And do you still call it Bush’s legs?

Yeah.

How do you say Bush’s legs in Ukrainian?

Noshkibusha.

Noshkibusha. This has got a story back there. I know it does, Martha.

It does indeed. It goes back to the story of an agreement between Mikhail Gorbachev and George Bush Sr., which happened in 1990.

And were you around then?

No, I’m 25.

Oh, okay.

All right.

Your mom may remember that during that time, food was somewhat scarce.

Certain kinds of food was somewhat scarce in the Soviet Union.

And so there was an agreement between George Bush Sr. and Mikhail Gorbachev,

which provided for the export of frozen chicken legs to that country.

So bush legs became very, very popular at the time because they were bigger than what people had seen, and they were inexpensive and readily available.

And apparently there was a joke that was going around at the time that said something like,

Bush family members come and go, but the legs are forever.

Really well.

I remember that.

Yeah.

And interestingly, it’s kind of an echo of back during World War II, under the Lend-Lease Act, the U.S. sent powdered eggs to the Soviet Union to help out people there.

And they referred to those dry powdered eggs as Roosevelt eggs.

So there might be some kind of parallel there.

But the chicken thing, just to put that in perspective, this 1990 deal between these two country leaders was so huge that at one point, 40 percent of all American chicken exports were going to the Soviet Union.

I mean, a staggering amount of chicken was leaving this country and going there.

So it flooded the market.

And there were different breeds of chicken, which explains why they were larger.

And, of course, they used different antibiotics and chemicals and hormones and stuff.

So I think I’m a little surprised, Natalia, that you still use the term Bush’s legs.

What I had read in a couple of my books was that it had faded in the younger generation and that they don’t use the term anymore.

But here you are.

Yeah. And I think it’s because when I’m talking to my mom, I use this term.

But, you know, you never talk about drumsticks with your friends and your peers.

So, yeah, this word comes up whenever I talk to my mom or to my grandma.

Yeah. OK. That makes a lot of sense.

That’s how we get some of our language, right?

Especially kitchen table words.

Kitchen table words we get from our parents.

Right.

Thank you so much for your help.

And thank you for the wonderful show you make.

Oh, it’s our pleasure.

Natalia, can I ask you a favor before we go?

Can you say goodbye A Way with Words in Ukrainian?

Yeah.

It would be the poboczny, the way it’s word.

Oh, that’s very nice.

Thank you so much.

And do call us again sometime, all right?

Yeah, sure.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

If you’ve got an encounter like that, some friction between the two parts of you,

your two languages that you speak, or the two cultures that you come from,

we’d love to work it out with you.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Yes.

This is Elizabeth Payne calling from Cape Cod.

Hello, Elizabeth.

Welcome to the show.

Hi, Elizabeth.

Hi there.

What can we do for you?

Well, I was with some friends a few weeks ago,

and one of them had a slip was showing just below her dress.

And so I said to her, Charlie’s dead.

And everybody looked at me like I’d got three heads.

And just, what on earth are you talking about?

Instead of the usual two.

Then I had to explain that in England, that was an expression we used all the time when somebody had their flip showing below the dress.

So do you have any thoughts who Charlie is?

I have no idea who Charlie could be.

I can’t think of a connection between a petticoat and Charlie.

Well, that’s fair.

Yeah, and the truth is nobody knows who Charlie is.

None of the word historians have done much better.

Oh, okay.

There are notions that perhaps Charlie is just some generic person who died

and the flag is flying at half-mast for him in the same way that a petticoat may be hanging down.

Some people have connected it with Bonnie Prince Charlie of Scotland

and the fact that he wore this little ribbon in his hair, on his hat, the white ribbon.

Yeah.

But we don’t know for sure.

So it’s just one of many, many, many expressions that indicate that your slip is showing.

Oh, dozens of them, right?

Oh, dozens at least.

Oh, there are?

Oh, yes.

When I was growing up and my slip was showing, my mother would tell me I had a Ph.D.

Oh, never heard that one.

It stands for petticoat hanging down.

Oh, well, that makes sense.

Yeah, but there are lots of these euphemisms, you know, where you can slyly tell somebody.

It’s sort of like telling somebody their fly is open.

But you tell them that their slip is showing.

You might say, your Monday is longer than your Tuesday.

It’s snowing down south is another one.

It’s snowing down south.

Oh, is that right?

Yes.

Monday comes before Sunday, or Mrs. White is out of jail.

Never heard of any of those.

We always just use Charlie’s dead, which is fine, so long as the person you’re saying to it doesn’t have a Charlie in the family.

Well, exactly. That would be rather alarming, wouldn’t it?

Yeah, right.

You know, this one has been around since at least the 1930s.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s much older.

It appears, as far as I know, all across the United States and pops up in the U.K.

It’s less common there, as far as I can tell.

Less common in the U.K.?

Yeah, as far as I can tell, at least now.

Who knows historically?

Maybe people wear longer dresses there.

Maybe.

Well, that’s interesting.

Or no slips.

I would know it.

Living in England.

Yeah.

But you’ve been stateside for a long time then.

Yes, I have.

I’ve lived overseas since 1980.

Oh, 1980.

Very good.

Well, Elizabeth, thank you so much for sharing this with us.

Well, thank you.

I’m sure we’re going to be flooded with a lot more expressions.

Yeah, of course.

And I suspect that you have lots more stories to share,

so I hope you’ll call us again sometime.

Oh, I do.

All right, take care now.

Thank you very much.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Goodbye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Email words at wewordradio.org or try us on Twitter @wayword.

Thanks to senior producer Stefanie Levine, director Colin Tedeschi, editor Tim Felten, and production assistant Tamara Wittenberg.

You can send us a message, subscribe to the podcast, get the newsletter, or 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 send us your thoughts to words@waywordradio.org.

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

We’re coming to you from the Recording Arts Center at Studio West in San Diego, California.

Thanks for listening. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. Until next time, goodbye.

Bye.

You