Pop Stand (episode #1452)

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. A friend of mine emailed me the other day and said,

I saw this bizarre metaphor in a restaurant review. What in the world is this?

The writer was describing a porterhouse steak and said that in terms of quality,

This steak, quote, could not have been more middle of the road than if it was glued to a cat’s eye.

Eh? Oh, a marble.

That’s what I said.

A marble? Cat’s eye marble?

Why would it be in the middle of a road?

Is that the name of the ring where you shoot marbles?

That’s a very good thing.

I don’t know.

A terrible theory.

I had no idea.

I mean, I was picturing a poor cat, you know.

Wait, more middle of the road than a…

Than if it were glued to a cat’s eye.

Okay, what is it?

Think of the middle of the road, you know, those little disks that are reflective.

Oh, that’s what those are called?

They’re called cat’s eyes.

Isn’t that great?

They were invented in the 1930s by one Percy Shaw of West Yorkshire.

So if you’re talking about something that’s glued to a cat’s eye, that’s perfectly middle of the road.

That’s outstanding.

Right.

But how would you know that unless you worked in the business, right?

I don’t know.

She read it in the Myanmar Times.

That’s nice.

Wait, so we use it in this country?

It’s used for sure in Britain.

And, yeah, there are lots of different words for those things.

So the reflective things in the middle of the road are called cat’s eyes.

Perfect.

Makes great sense.

I know.

Now it does.

Thank goodness for the internet.

Thank you, internet.

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Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Good morning.

This is Laura from San Diego.

Hi, Laura.

Welcome.

What’s up?

How can we help?

So I have been thinking about the fact that there are several card games that I play that have multiple names.

What brought it to my attention was my friends introduced me to a card game called Nerds.

And when they taught me the rules, I said, oh, that’s Canfield.

I’ve been playing that since I was a kid.

And there’s several other games that are like that.

And I was just kind of intrigued by the idea that there’s these card games that the rules are the same,

But people know them by many different names.

Is nerds the one that involves shouting nerds really loudly?

Yeah, when you win, you shout nerds.

Because I remember my parents playing nerds.

Although growing up, we shouted Canfield.

Oh, really?

I was going to say.

I thought Canfield was a type of solitaire.

You know, I actually just looked it up recently,

And it turns out that if you play nerds alone, you’re playing Canfield.

But growing up, I learned Canfield as the group game.

Oh, okay.

See, there we go.

This is all over my head.

I don’t know either of those games.

But I love this because…

And I just learned that Canfield is the name of the casino owner who invented the game.

That’s right. Robert, was it? Robert Canfield?

I’m not sure.

He died, actually. He fell in the New York City subway, and he cracked his head and died from that.

Oh, that’s true.

I want his story to be something dramatic at the poker table, but no.

So you’re not going to tell me that Nertz is named for Mr. Joe Nertz?

No.

Not that I know of.

No, but first I want to address the reason that she called, which is why there are all these names.

Right.

Because these games are still a part of the language.

I mean, what we call them still behaves by the principles of slang and insider groups and the way we think alike, people like us, how we exclude others intentionally or include others intentionally.

And certainly these games are passed almost in the same way that folklore is passed from person to person.

I mean, most people who learn these games learn them by word of mouth from somebody else and not from like a Hoyle’s rulebook or anything like that.

And so the names, too, are part of that.

The names can be changed.

People are whimsical with names.

But the other thing is I love that so many of these names for card games sound fierce and strong and bold.

Because partly what you want to do is psych out people, right?

You train the noob or the rube because you’re going to take them for a lot of money.

And you want them to be further psyched out by calling it something really exaggerated.

A good example of that is a game that I learned as Egyptian racehorses.

Yeah.

But I learned it at church camp.

And it turns out the real name is Egyptian Rat Screw or Egyptian Rat F Word.

Oh, F Word. Oh, yeah.

I also learned there’s a card game called BS, which stands for a bad word, but I learned it and we would euphemistically call it Bible study.

Outstanding.

Oh, you’re a kindred spirit.

That’s kind of camp I went to.

Well, the Egyptian notion is real fun, too, because the playing cards are thought to have entered European culture from Egypt.

Apparently they started in China, traveled through Asia, through what was then Persia, in Egypt, and then came up with the Mediterranean traders into the southern European countries.

And there’s always been this notion since like the 12th century that there’s something vaguely Egyptian about the card games.

Kind of exotic.

Yeah, kind of exotic.

Maybe even the game Pharaoh is somehow connected to the name of the Egyptian leader.

We don’t really understand this distance.

But the thing I want to talk about is nerds because nerds, what you’re shouting is a whimsical, corrupted form of the word nuts in UTS and all of the meanings of it.

And I will not elaborate here, but I will say that it’s directly related to you when when someone says, like, you need to give me all your money because I’m going to the store and you say nuts to you.

I’m not giving you anything. It’s that nut. It’s the kind of like it’s kind of like the in your face kind of exclamation or interjection.

Yeah, but I don’t know why it was corrupted, but it goes back to at least the 1920s in the nerds form.

Nerds.

I looked it up on Wikipedia, and it says it’s also known by the names Hell, Pounce, Peanuts, Racing Demon, or Squinch.

Squinch, yeah, I don’t know any of those.

But Peanuts, that fits with what you’re saying.

Yeah, I don’t know any of those, but in my house, my parents would play.

There were certain family members when they’d come to town.

It was a card tournament upstairs, and you wanted to plug your ears because they’re so loud.

And some of these games, you not only shout out something when you’ve done the deed, whatever it happens to be,

But there’s table slapping as part of the game, right?

You’re supposed to pound the table or claim a card as it’s turned over?

I don’t even know.

No, in that game, you’re all trying to play cards on the same spot.

And so it’s whoever can play it faster and that probably gets loud.

But it ends up as table pounding.

Yeah.

It’d be really aggressive.

All right.

Well, if you are interested in cards, I think there is an opening for a book or at least a long article about the names of card games.

Because as far as I know, no real substantial work has been done on the names of card games.

No, like tracing the names of the etymological history.

Plenty of work has been done to trace the games themselves, but not the names.

There you go, Laura.

You got your work cut out for you.

-oh.

Thanks for your call, Laura.

All right.

Thank you, guys.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

This is a show about words and language and culture and family and history and just about anything,

Because language is tied to it all.

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You remember our conversation about examine your zipper?

Yeah.

Different ways that you can tell people that they’re flies.

Flies undone.

Yeah, yeah.

And probably the most common one, the one that I knew of was XYZ, right?

Examine your zipper.

We heard from Nina Lyons, and she says, in Pittsburgh, we say Kennywood is open.

What’s Kennywood?

A local amusement park.

Oh.

Is that like Kenny Rogers?

No, no.

Like Dollywood?

I was just thinking like a park.

It’s an amusement park.

She said just the other night, this happened to my husband.

And he said, why didn’t you tell me Kennywood was open?

She said, I didn’t notice.

I’m borrowing that one.

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Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Allison.

I’m actually calling from San Diego, California.

You’re nearby.

What’s on your mind?

So I have this phrase that my husband says every now and then, but I have no clue where it came from or exactly what it means.

And I’ve been searching everywhere, and the only thing I could find was sort of a similar version of the phrase as a Dan Ratherism.

Oh, boy. That’s a deep category. What’s this one?

Okay, so what he says sometimes is, sure, if a frog had a pouch, he’d carry a gun.

And what does he mean by it?

If a frog had a pouch, he’d carry a gun.

What he tells me is that it’s sort of sarcastic saying, I would if I could, but I can’t, so I won’t.

It’s a version of that.

And I think it’s from the South.

His family, all of his family is from the South.

And no one in my family is from the South.

So, you know, sometimes there’s other things that I’m not quite sure what he’s saying, but that’s a whole other thing.

And what made you connected to Dan Rather?

Well, I just honestly did a Google search, and it came up as something he supposedly said on air once as well.

Yeah, he did.

It was during the brouhaha after the 2000 presidential election, right?

Oh.

He was on the air constantly, and people kept remarking on, and everyone was watching, and people kept remarking on his folksy language.

Yeah, that sounds like him, yeah.

And so what he said, I’m looking at an article from the LA Times.

If a frog had side pockets, he’d carry a handgun.

It may have existed before that election, but boy, even looking for a wide variety of variations, it looks like Dan Rather, at the minimum, was the popularizer of it, that he spread the word.

There’s no understating how many people watched the television news after that election just to keep up with things.

And so he had maybe had a lot of influence.

And then articles were written about Dan Rather’s speech.

And he’s a Texan, and he does have that rich appreciation for clever phrasing and a real knack for it.

Yeah, it reminds me of that Texanism, that’s as handy as hip pockets on a hog.

Oh, nice. That’s good.

Yeah, that does sound like it. You know, my husband’s family is from Texas.

Oh, so there we go. A couple other variations.

If a frog had pockets, he’d wear pistols so he could shoot snakes.

And if a frog had hip pockets, he’d carry a gun.

But they’re all basically the idea of it is just ridiculous to think of a frog having pockets, much less having a weapon.

And so whatever you’re asking for is just not going to take place.

So sort of like if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

Beggars would ride.

That’s quite interesting.

I know, right?

If you want to just Google Dan Rather, I don’t know, metaphors, Dan Rather, Texanisms, and you’ll find a whole bunch more of these things.

Maybe we’ll share some later in the show.

Yeah, that sounds fun.

All right.

Thank you.

Take care.

Bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Those mixed cultural marriages, sometimes things just come up, don’t they?

Yeah.

One language here, another language there.

It’s both supposedly English.

It’s great.

Diversity is the great strength of the English language, right?

I agree, yeah.

Mix and match.

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If there’s one buzz phrase I’m ready to see go the way of all other old buzz phrases, it’s dumpster fire.

Oh, like tire fire.

Dumpster fire meaning a very, very bad situation.

Right, where nothing seems to have a resolution and everybody’s bickering and it’s the worst it could possibly be.

Yeah, yeah.

I think it’s been around for fewer than 10 years.

Yeah, I think so.

And I think it started in the sports writing world.

Oh, did it?

Yeah, or that’s where it was popularized.

But all of a sudden, I’m just seeing it everywhere.

There was a headline in the Weekly Standard, our national dumpster fire.

And Hillary Clinton’s campaign actually tweeted something describing one of the Republican debates as a dumpster fire.

I’m so tired of dumpster fire.

What is it about a word’s constant use that makes it repulsive?

To me, dumpster fire is just such an icky image, for one thing.

What, just burning trash is just gross?

Yeah, yeah.

And it just seems like this linguistic conga line that everybody’s joining.

Right.

Or bandwagon.

Without much thought or care.

Yeah, yeah.

And if you haven’t heard dumpster fire, you’re going to hear it tomorrow.

I guarantee it.

Or just now.

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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 here comes our quiz guy, John Chaneski. Hi, John.

Hey, hello, Martha. Hello, Grant. What’s up, bud?

I have a little quiz for you here. This is about loanwords. You know, I’m always trying to come up with a different category each time. This time we’re going to look at loanwords. I’ll give you four English words at a shot that are loanwords from other languages. Now, three of them will be from the same language, and the fourth will be the odd loan word out.

For example, if I say alcohol, assassin, billabong, checkmate, you would say the odd word out is?

Billabong.

Billabong, right?

Not from Arabic.

It’s not from Arabic.

It is Australian in origin.

Very good.

Let’s see how you do.

Here’s the first one.

Bigot, quiche, saloon, tornado.

Tornado.

Tornado.

Because it’s from Spanish.

The others are from French.

Yes, very good.

Alligator, bravado, guitar, stucco.

Stucco.

Guitar, I’m sorry.

No, I would say alligator.

Alligator is from, well, Spanish.

You know what they say.

Always go with your first guess unless it’s wrong.

When I say stucco?

Your first guess was right.

Stucco is correct.

Oh, is it from Italian?

It is from Italian.

Yes, very good.

The others are from?

Spanish.

Spanish.

Spanish is right.

Okay.

Here’s the next one.

Casino, fugue, umbrella, yacht.

Casino, fugue, umbrella, yacht.

Yes, that’s the magic password.

You win a million dollars.

And the door opens.

I’m going to say yacht.

Is that not German?

That’s correct.

Actually, it’s Dutch.

Okay, for hunter.

A little hunting boat.

Oh, okay.

Very good.

The others are?

Italian.

Yes, Italian.

Very good.

Maelstrom, slalom, smorgasbord, vodka.

Vodka.

Is?

Russian for a little water.

And the others are Swedish.

Very good.

Bungalow, ghetto, shampoo, thug.

Oh, ghetto.

Three of them come from Hindi and the other one comes from Italian.

Yeah, ghetto.

Yes, very good.

Ghetto is from the Italian and the rest are from the Hindi.

How about boondocks, gingham, jungle, tattoo?

Gingham, because the others are from Tagalog.

Or they’re from the Philippines, necessarily, right?

No, gingham is also Pacific Islander.

For real?

Yes.

Okay, let’s hear those again, because tattoo is from there.

Gingham, jungle, tattoo.

I guess jungle, then.

Yes, jungle is correct.

It’s a Hindi word.

Yes, yeah.

I had a friend of mine whose wife is from the Philippines explain to me today the origins of boondocks and how American servicemen brought it over.

Kampong, yeah.

That’s right.

You guys were fantastic.

Congratulations.

You did great.

I liked that one a whole lot, dude.

Always nice to talk to you.

We’ll talk to you again next week.

Keep puzzling, all right?

You too, guys.

Keep wording it up.

Take care.

Will do.

Bye-bye.

You know, we take calls from around the world.

If you’ve been wanting to talk to us, now’s a really good time.

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Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Bob Beacons from Oceanside, California.

Hi, Bob. How are you doing?

Hey, Bob.

Doing great. Oh, both of you.

Hi, Grant. Hi, Martha.

You get two for one, Bob.

What’s up?

I’m so lucky.

What can we help with?

Well, I was selling real estate down in Mexico, down in Baja,

And I knew about the police.

They’re occasionally taking what’s called a mordida, which is a bribe if you’re about to get a ticket.

And I was pumping gas one day, and there was a dog next to the pump, and I got that look in my eye like I wanted to pet it.

And the guy on the other side of the pump said, peligro mordida estepero or something like that.

And I thought, what the heck does a dog want a bribe for?

And then he made a motion with his hands like biting, and I went, oh, Mordida means to bite.

Yeah.

So I remembered store owner protection money in New Jersey being called putting the bite on him.

So I’m wondering, did the bite from New Jersey and Mordida, meaning the bite in Mexico,

Did they happen concurrently or separately?

How did that roll out?

Oh, what an interesting question.

It is indeed.

Yeah, put the bite on in English and then the Spanish word mordida, which means bite.

M-O-R-D-I-D-A.

Yes, yes.

Let’s dispatch the English one first because it’s pretty simple.

Just putting the bite on somebody, as we said, is to take something forcefully that’s not yours.

And I haven’t seen that any earlier than the early 20th century.

And it’s often associated with gambling.

So I don’t know if there’s a gambling connection or not, but I haven’t seen it any earlier than the 1930s.

What’s interesting about the term Mordida in Spanish is that the Royal Academy in Spain hasn’t been able to come up with a firm etymology of Mordida.

But if you look at some of the Spanish language sites, there are a couple of funny stories that purport to explain its origin.

Would you like to hear them?

Sure.

It’s funny because they both go back to the 17th century.

One of them is that there was a representative of the Spanish king in what is now Mexico,

And he had very bad oral hygiene and needed new teeth.

And so his underlings, sort of trying to impress him,

Went around and collected bribes from people to pay for the guy’s dental work.

And then that worked out so well that they continued to take bribes.

Tribes in the future, but it was for la mordida, for the guy’s bite, which is such a colorful

Story that I’m sure Grant is having the same kind of…

Yeah, colorful stories with language origins are almost always fake.

Yes, yes.

And there’s one more…

Too good to be true.

Yeah, one more that’s floating around, actually, literally, which is that in the 17th century

When some of these Spanish galleons would crash close to shore and sink, they would hire

People to go and get the stuff from the ship. And, you know, people who would dive maybe 20 or 30

Feet in the water. And on their, supposedly on their last trip down, they could take whatever

Coins were there and fill as many as possible into their mouths and come back to the surface.

And they were allowed to keep that little Mordavita. Also a silly story, colorful. I’ve seen

Illustrations of it online, but. How do you hold your breath and put coins in your mouth? That was

My question. Maybe this is

One of those look up gullible

In the dictionary kinds of things.

I don’t know. But what interests

Me is that we only see it

In English, put the bite on, back

To the 30s or so, but

There are these stories, supposedly,

That go back to the 17th century.

But there are a lot of other words for

Bribing and bribes in

American English, so it’s not the only one.

They have to do with biting? Well, they don’t, but they

Have to do with eating to sweeten

Something, to bribe somebody.

Or sweeten someone, or a smear or a schmear in New York City,

But that’s your little extra on top, right?

We do, by the way, Bob, we do say to get a taste means to get your part of something.

That is still even used today.

Like if there’s a big business deal going down and I want a little kickback

Or a little bribe to make it happen, I could call it getting my taste or getting a taste,

And that’s the bribe.

Nice.

So, Bob, thanks for a great question.

Oh, my pleasure.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

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Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi there.

My name is Trevor Wyatt, and I’m calling from Abilene, Texas.

Hi, Trevor.

Welcome to the show.

Hi, Trevor.

What’s up?

Well, I live in Texas, and I’ve lived in Texas most of my life.

But my mom is from Chicago, and my father is from a little town in Maryland called Elkton.

And for a long time, we used to go up to Maryland all the time.

And we would have these things that we called spagglers.

And so I didn’t think anything of it.

I just thought that’s what they were called.

So I get to college eventually, and I go up to the lunch line and ask for some spagglers.

And the guy looks at me like I’m crazy, like he’s never heard that word before in his life.

So I look at the sign and see what they’re called, and they’re called asparagus.

Oh.

So I had never heard them called that before in my life.

Really?

Never?

Apparently, that’s what everybody calls them.

So I was wondering if it was just the fact my grandpa probably didn’t even finish middle school

And was not a highly educated man and didn’t have the clearest hearing either.

So I was wondering if that was a part of it or if it was just something that people said up there.

Let me ask you a question.

Did you have this whole separate track of knowledge about asparagus, though, at the same time?

Did you know that the word asparagus existed and that it referred to a vegetable?

Yes, I did.

I knew that asparagus was a vegetable.

I just didn’t know that it was that.

Right.

Oh, my gosh, that’s great.

So you didn’t learn about asparagus until you went to college.

No, absolutely not, and I felt like an idiot afterwards.

Oh, no.

Oh, but here we are laughing at your misfortune.

Yeah, because it makes our day.

I have not ever seen spagglers.

And asparagus is just a weird word that lends itself to lots of variation.

It goes by lots of different names all around the country, like sparrowgrass.

Aspirin grass.

Aspirin grass, yeah.

Spare guts, I’ve seen.

Dusty roots in Louisiana.

And a lot of times the A drops off.

It’s a…

So asparagus.

Asparagus, yeah.

Asphetic, yeah.

In upstate New York, it’s called, in some places, Martha Washington or Mary Washington.

What?

Go figure.

I didn’t know that.

Go figure.

So there are probably people, you know, going to school in Syracuse right now who are learning

That it’s not necessarily Martha Washington.

Well, that’s really interesting. I’d never heard that before. Thank you so much for opening my eyes to that.

Yeah, a ton of people say other things. Don’t feel too bad about it.

Though I have to say, I haven’t seen Spaggler’s on the record anywhere. Yours is the first time I’ve seen it.

I like it.

Was he a jokey person? Maybe it was just one of those family words that somebody mispronounced once?

It might have been one of those family words because he tried to joke around with us as much as he could.

So maybe he knew what it was and then was acting like he didn’t know what it was and then taught his entire family as kind of a cool joke.

And sent you out in the world.

Trevor, I love this linguistic heirloom of yours.

I think you should keep it and spread it around.

It’s a gift to hold tight to.

Yeah.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, our pleasure.

Thank you for calling.

Yeah, thanks.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Some places it’s called Rich Man’s Vegetable.

Some places it’s called Cow Feed.

I like Dusty Roots in Louisiana.

Dusty Roots.

Beet greens.

Give me some beet greens.

Beet greens.

I’ve never heard that one.

Beet greens.

This show is about history, culture, and family all wrapped up in language.

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You know, Grant, earlier in the show when we were talking with Allison, you were talking about Dan Rather-isms, these little things that he comes up with.

And I have to say that my favorite of all time was when he described something as being shakier than cafeteria jello.

That just brought back so many memories of going through cafeteria lines and that jello in cubes and the little glass things.

Yeah, and they’re a little bit wobbly probably because they’re more wobbly than what I had at home probably because they’re watered down, right?

Oh, maybe, yeah.

Cafeteria jello.

It’s shakier than the jello that we made at home.

So my favorite, rather, is I’m going to remember now, a lot of these came to light when he was doing this extensive coverage after the debacle of the 2000 election.

Right.

Nonstop.

And he’s talking about his endurance and his ability and willingness to sit there and keep reporting the news as it happens.

And he says, when it comes to reporting a race like this, I’m a long distance runner and an all day hunter.

And I just love that.

It’s just the two different ideas of a guy who’s going to hunt down the story and just keep going until, you know, past the marathon.

Pass the Red Bull.

Double marathon, triple marathon, yeah.

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Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, is this Martha?

This is Martha.

Who’s this?

Hi, I’m Elizabeth Bird calling from Bozeman, Montana.

Well, welcome, Elizabeth.

Hi, Elizabeth, what’s up?

Good to talk with you.

Hi, Grant.

So my question was, I read in an article in the paper, I don’t remember if it was a local article or an AP piece, but it mentioned a pitch battle.

And I had always thought it was pitched with an ED battle.

And I kind of perused the definitions of pitch in my dictionary and didn’t really find something that seemed to fit.

And then yesterday I heard another news piece where they were talking about starvation had reached a serious pitch.

And I wondered if pitched battle and a pitch of extreme is the same pitch and how it’s related to the other definitions of pitch.

You’ve chosen a real humdinger of a word.

Pitch is super complicated here.

I want to address your specific question, though, about whether or not the newspaper article should have had pitched battle or pitched battle, whether or not there should have been ED after pitch.

And it should have been pitched battle, P-I-T-C-H-E-D.

That’s the standard form of that compound.

Unless they were actually throwing a black sticky substance at each other, it probably should not be a pitch battle.

Or it occurred in a baseball stadium.

Right.

A pitch battle.

They’re just, I don’t really, yeah.

Was it a baseball game?

No?

No, no, no.

So the black sticky stuff, the tar-like stuff, that’s a whole different pitch.

And it’s even got a different etymological origin.

This other pitch has all these different meanings.

And they’re all connected, but we’re not quite sure how.

I say we meaning dictionary makers.

So pitch as in pitch of the voice, pitch as in the angle of a roof, pitch as in to throw something.

And then we now have this pitch as in pitch battle.

This particular one is related to pitching a tent.

You put up your tent.

It’s called pitching a tent.

You put your stakes in the ground.

You put the poles into place.

You create a shelter with an angled roof.

Perhaps that has something to do with it.

Maybe it’s related to pitch as in angle.

And the other thing it has to do with is a pitch as in a football pitch, what the British would call the field where they play soccer, right?

Because both of these are referred to a very specific place for a very specific action.

Formally, a pitched battle was a battle at a prearranged time and place.

Martha is going to muster her troops, so I’m going to muster mine.

We’re going to meet at the beach at dawn.

We’re going to beat each other with pool noodles, whatever the battle is.

But that’s our pitched battle, right?

Because we’ve planned it, we’ve bought our ranks and our forces, and we’re coming in with a plan.

However, it’s moved on a little bit to mean any really violent confrontation between large groups of people.

That was my understanding.

Yeah, that’s how it more or less is now.

So the complicated factors here are that we don’t really know the origins of pitch, but we’re pretty sure it’s related to pitch a tent, a football pitch, and so on and so forth.

Yeah, I think the common thread in all of these is basically positioning.

You know, you’re positioning a tent, you’re positioning armies on the battlefield.

That’s a really good way to do that.

I mean, that would be a very good, broad, overarching meaning here, particularly because that would allow us to include things like pitching horseshoes.

I’m positioning my horseshoe next to the stake, right?

It’s a little harder to squeeze in the pitch of your voice in there, but we could probably mangle the definition or broaden it enough to make it fit.

Yeah.

Position of your voice.

Yeah, position of your voice.

But what about, like, I thought it kind of meant extreme, like, as they talked about, starvation reached a serious pitch.

So I wondered if it meant, like, an extreme point.

Well, again, that’s a position, a level, like a pitch in music.

And we can get even a little more specific than that in comparing it to music.

We talk about pitches and the angle of a roof.

We talk about the degrees of a roof.

And we could easily say the hunger reached a pitch degree, just that we could say that the roof was built with a very severe pitch.

So it’s about the degree, the measure, the quantity, the force, but always about in comparison to where it could be and where it needs to be.

Yeah. And what I think is really interesting is the idea that it’s changed from the notion of two armies showing up at the same time.

By appointment.

Yeah, which is a notion that goes all the way back to ancient Greek tradition.

I mean, there are Greek words that translate as things like battles by agreement.

It’s like Alexander Hamilton showing up with Aaron Burr in a pre-appointed time.

Don with pistols or what have you.

Yeah.

Which leads me to the final thing I think I want to say on this, which is we got this into English from the French, which is where we got many of our military words overall and many of our military practices.

La bataille rangée, basically an arranged battle or arranged battle.

Right.

Right.

But now, as you said, it can mean just a really intense battle.

That’s what I understood for years.

I only recently learned about pitch.

That’s pretty much where it is now, except in specialist use.

Yeah, so it’s changed a bit.

How’s that sound?

It’s so interesting how you’ve related pitches, tone, pitches, toss, pitches, and angle of the roof.

I thought those were completely different definitions, but they’re related.

It’s wonderful.

Thank you so much for your call.

Really appreciate it.

Thank you.

I really enjoy your show.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Send your questions and email to words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, do you know what bots dots are?

They’re also called turtles in Washington and Oregon, or in Texas they’re called buttons.

No idea.

Kind of flower?

Kind of fungus?

No.

Remember earlier we were talking about cat’s eyes being those reflective markers?

Bots dots are just the raised pavement markers.

They’re like little ceramic dunes.

Oh, okay.

Those are Bots Dots named for our guy.

Dr. Elbert Bots, a California engineer.

Bots Dots.

877-929-9673.

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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.

A few years ago, Ann Patty retired from her job as a book editor in New York City and moved to the country.

And she found herself trying to figure out how she was going to fill her time.

She’d always, of course, had a fascination with words, and eventually this led her to take classes in, of all things, college-level Latin.

She writes about this in her new book called Living with a Dead Language, My Romance with Latin.

Grant, it’s a charming introduction to Latin itself and to the orderliness and beauty of the language and the way that the real masters of Latin poetry, once you get past all the stuff in Caesar, and they’re able to take those big clunky Latin words and just make them dance.

So it’s a lovely memoir in those terms.

But what struck me is that the book is also about learning later in life.

And that brings me to one of my favorite words that I love.

It comes from the ancient Greek.

It’s Opsomath.

Opsomath?

Opsomath.

O-P-S-I-M-A-T-H.

It comes from Greek words that mean learn late in life.

And it got me to thinking about the question that I have for you, Grant, which is what is on your ophthalmatic bucket list, your realistic bucket list? Not like, you know, maybe I’ll do this something. But what’s on your agenda? I don’t think of myself as late in life yet. Well, no. But it’s a good question. Later.

And I wonder what it was about that author. What is her name again? Anne Patti. I wonder what it was about Ann Patty and me and people like us that makes us want to work on a language late in life because I constantly want to improve my French and Spanish. I do minimal things. I subscribe to a lot of Facebook pages and groups and those languages and topics that I care about and in that way see some French and Spanish every day. But I wonder about that. What is it about having the time now that makes you want to work on a language? I also want Spanish so I can go to Mexico and enjoy myself.

Well, I was going to say, exactly. I mean, if you’re going to start on an ancient language late in life. Not much utility except for reading. Yeah, or talking to other Latins. But yeah, it’s not going to help you when you want to go to a foreign country and ask where the bathroom is, right? There’s a lot of wisdom and beauty in the ancient literature, and that’s what she was going after. But what are you going after?

On my realistic Opsimathic bucket list, I definitely have ASL. I want to learn American Sign Language. Oh, yeah, sure. Just because it’s such a different way of handling, literally, language. Communicating differently. Yeah. And so I’m very curious to learn that. Other than that, in terms of skills, I think of skills that I have that I want to continue. I would love to get back to sculling. I used to do a lot of rowing and juggling. I am a lapsed member of the International Jugglers Association. I always want to be learning something new. I always want to be a beginner at something. That’s important.

Martha, that book again was? It’s called Living with a Dead Language, My Romance with Latin by Ann Patti. Great. Well, we’d love to hear what you are doing to learn now. You don’t have to be late in life. Let us know with a big project in your life, the one thing that you’re really working on that you’re actually going to sign up for so that you can learn and move forward and become something new or something better. Yeah, or maybe you’ve done it. Maybe you’ve done it and had the experience, and you can tell us how amazing it was. 877-929-9673. Or if it’s really long, throw it in an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, how are you? This is Brandon Smith. I’m calling from southern Vermont. Southern Vermont? Well, welcome, Brandon. It’s sunnier in southern Vermont than it is in northern Vermont, right? It’s true. It’s like the banana belt of the state, you know? Banana creamies. What’s on your mind, dude? The tropic. What can we help with?

Hey, I was wondering about a couple words that my grandfather used to use in Mississippi. So that’s where I was born. Half of my family was there, and I used to go there. In the summers as a kid, whenever I’d show up, he’d always say, hey, puzzle gut. So that’s one that I’m kind of curious about. And another one, we used to go fishing in the bayous over in Louisiana. And a term that he used over there would be when we heard a noise coming from the bushes or out in the bayous somewhere. We didn’t know what it was. He’d always say it was a wampus cat. And those two things, I’ve never really looked up or known what they were. So I was wondering if you could help me out.

Brandon, I’m curious about how he used those. For example, did he imply that a wampus cat was something scary? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think it was kind of meant to create a vague critter kind of out in the bushes. You know, I don’t know if he meant to necessarily scare us, but it certainly wasn’t a friendly pet that we were going to go find. Right, right. Okay. And when he called, when he said, hey, puzzle gut, puzzle gut? Z’s or S’s? No, I think it was S. Oh, okay. Q-S-S-E-L, maybe. Okay. So was that affectionate? Was it teasing? Yeah, it was a bit teasing, kind of tongue-in-cheek. You know, he’s just kind of picking on us, I think, was his intention.

Did you have a pot belly? No, I didn’t. But, you know, I don’t think it would have mattered to him. I think you would have used it either way. Well, I asked for a reason, not just because I was curious about your body type. Because the pussel part is very related to the word pus, as in the liquid that’s inside a blister. Huh. And so the idea is that you have a pot belly or a big belly. Like a swollen gut. Yeah, you have a swollen gut. I guess I kind of assumed that’s what it was, but I really had no idea, you know, like a little potbelly kind of thing.

Yeah, and there’s lots of record of this. The Dictionary of American Regional English, one of our trusted sources here, has a really great entry on this. They take it back as far as 1909, where it pops up in an academic book series called Dialect Notes. And it’s never been very common, but it’s still out there. That’s great. Yeah, right? It’s cool. And then Wampus Cat. Now, I’m sure you Googled Wampus Cat. Did you? I actually haven’t. Oh, come now. The two I was going to, but I figured I’d call you first. Do it, because there’s a ton of information. It’s a classic folklore animal from American culture. We have a ton of these. It’s kind of up there. It’s not as famous as Bigfoot, but maybe it should be. It’ll pop up in story after story, campfire tales, fiction, nonfiction. It’s gotten the full kind of folklore treatment from experts. It’s really interesting. Even the Wikipedia entry, and I hesitate to say this, is not terrible on it. And some of the pictures are hilarious. They imagine a man-cougar creature with a spear and a loincloth poised to attack or something like this. It’s really interesting.

Poised to attack the wampus cat? No, the wampus cat is that. Oh, wow. Some of the illustrations are just hilarious. Wampus cat. Yeah, no kidding. That’s great. I’ll have to carry that one on with myself. Yeah, definitely. I had no idea about the backstory like that. Google it. Find the stories. Are you going to carry on Puzzle Gut as well? Yeah, why not? They’re just kind of fun things, you know. It’s just like a term of endearment. I’ve always remembered it. I mean, I was probably, you know, five years old, the first hearted or younger. Yeah, it’s kind of sweet. Man, if you were a five-year-old, you could have had that little cute little pot belly the kids have. Yeah. Yeah, it’s probably true. Who knows, you know. That’s really great. Well, thanks a lot, guys. Yeah, sure, Brandon. Thanks for your call. Thanks, Brandon. Bye-bye. Have fun in sunny Vermont. I will. Bye.

877-929-9673 is the number to call to talk about language or send us an email. That address is words@waywordradio.org. Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is Peg Tanner, and I’m in Springfield, Illinois. Oh, hi, Peg. How are you doing? Hello, Peg. Hey, hi. What can we do for you? Well, I have a saying that I hadn’t heard before when I went to Eastern Illinois University. My friend BJ’s grandfather had a strange comeback for, how are you? We would walk in the door and we would say, Granddad, how are you doing? And he would always say, fork it and down. And he was born in 1894, and he lived on a farm near Wearden, Illinois, which is close to Charleston. And so he was a farm boy. And I believe when you say fork it in down, it’s because your hay fork is down. You’re fit and ready to work. Everything’s okay. So when he would say that, it meant that he was in good operating condition, right? Yeah, everything was fine. If he was fork it in down. Fork it in down. Peggy, have you ever drawn a stick figure? Of course. Okay.

Which end of that is forked?

The top or the bottom?

The bottom, yes.

The other end looks like a spoon.

Yeah, exactly.

So if your forked end is down, both of your feet are on the floor.

Yeah, that’s interesting.

Very interesting.

Yeah, so you’re not laid up with illness or you’re not sleeping, you’re not relaxing.

Yeah.

You’re not feet up.

That’s right.

You’re not feet up.

You know, you’re still standing.

That’s how I think of it.

You’re still standing.

Not like a dead bug in the windowsill.

Yeah.

So it’s a pretty simple explanation.

I’ve seen descriptions of people riding bucking broncos and going forked and up, you know, when they get thrown from the horse.

-huh.

I see.

Yeah, but if you’re forking it down or forked in down, then you’re standing tall.

Ready to go.

On your feet and raring to go.

Okay.

Well, that’s all I have then.

All right.

Thank you so much, Peg.

Take care of yourself.

Thanks, Peg.

Keep that forked end down.

Okay, I will.

Bye-bye.

My forked end is down.

Okay, good.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

It’s old-fashioned, but it’s out there.

You can find this in old Google Books, forked end down, right?

Yeah.

It’s not that common.

I like it.

I do, too.

Because…

It takes just a second for it to click, right?

-huh.

Just a second.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I think that’s going to be my new response is when people say, how are you doing?

Because how often do they really want to know how you’re doing, right?

Almost never.

It’s just custom.

Forked and down.

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Just search for A Way with Words.

The other day I was hiking in beautiful Mission Trails Regional Park here,

And I saw a bunch of turkey vultures,

And that got me to thinking about turkey vultures.

And there turned out to be a great display there at the visitor center about turkey vultures.

And now I am newly obsessed with turkey vultures.

Because there’s so much cool language involved.

You know what a group of vultures in a tree is called?

Is this a real collective noun?

Yes.

It’s one of the artistic ones.

No, no.

No, I don’t know what it is.

It’s a committee.

A committee of vultures.

Or you can say a venue of vultures or a vault of vultures.

A vault, V-U-L-T?

V-O-L-T.

V-O-L-T.

And the word for a group of vultures flying is different.

It’s kettle.

A kettle of vultures.

A kettle, like K-E-T-T-L-E?

Yes.

And then a group of vultures that is feeding on a dead animal is called awake.

Awake.

Awake of vultures.

Yeah, yeah.

These are terms that ornithologists use.

These are real terms or jokey terms?

No, they’re terms that ornithologists use.

You know, another cool thing about them that I learned is that,

Did you know that vultures, to cool themselves, will pee on their legs?

No.

How is that cool?

It’s called urohydrosis, from Greek for urine sweating.

Okay.

You know, it evaporates and cools their legs.

Congratulations.

Another reason not to hang around with vultures.

And their Latin name, cathartes ara, means cleansing breeze.

So bald heads, the smell of carrion, and pee on their legs.

Yeah.

Remarkable creatures.

But they’re the waste management business of nature.

America’s strongest.

Yes.

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Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, this is Daniel in Dallas, Texas.

Hey, Daniel, welcome.

How are you doing?

What can we help with?

My best friend growing up, whenever we would be hanging out with the group people,

He was kind of the cool one of the group.

And whenever we’d get bored, things would slow down,

And he came up with an idea of what he wanted to do.

He would say, let’s blow this popsicle stand,

And then he would just get up and kind of walk off, and we would follow him.

I always thought he made it up, and then I found out recently that other people have heard that before.

And so I was just wondering where, I mean, yeah, why are we blowing up optical stands, and why that means having a good time, although I can see why it might be a good time.

There’s two parts to this.

The one that’s most operational would be the word to blow, which is meant to leave since well into the 1800s.

Very slangy uses, of course.

But if you blow, you’re blowing out of here.

You’re blowing on through.

You’re done.

You’re gone.

They’re sailing away with the tide winds.

So the pop stand part is really complicated.

Well, a popsicle stand is how many people say it today,

But it was originally pop stand.

And pop for soda isn’t universally known,

So people replaced it with popsicle, which is more universally known.

So a pop stand was just a place where you’d go get a soda back in the day,

Like the 50s or 60s.

And then by the early 90s, yeah.

So basically you’re just leaving this place

Where you just had a refreshment, that’s it.

And then we replaced it with a bunch of other things.

There are a wide variety of variations on,

Let’s blow this whatever.

Popsicle and popsicle stand is just the most current one.

There are a couple of places that I think had a lot to do

With blow this whatever coming into the fore

Of kind of slang usage.

Was the 1953 movie The Wild One with Marlon Brando.

And also in 1973, there was a book called A Good Day to Die by Jim Harrison.

And that book was a bestseller.

And there’s a line in there with some coarse language we can’t use on the air.

But he says, let’s get ready and let’s get out of this pop stand.

And that’s one of the first places that we can find pop stand being used in that way.

But it refers specifically to a place where you’d get an old-fashioned soda.

Yeah, that makes more sense to me than a popsicle stand.

I’ve never seen a popsicle stand.

Exactly, but a pop stand for sure, like a drugstore soda fountain.

Yeah, or just something at the fair or something where they’re serving up.

Yeah, that makes a lot more sense.

I just had a little aha moment myself.

So that’s it, and here we are still saying it.

But it’s always had a tinge of the cool cat saying it,

So it’s interesting that your friend who fashions himself as the cool one kind of retains that.

It’s never been really nerdy usage.

It’s always been like, I’m the leader of this group.

Let’s blow this joint.

Let’s get out of here.

Yeah, I’m picturing James Dean, you know, in tight pants and cigarettes rolled up in his short sleeve.

Well, that’s how Brando is in that film I mentioned.

He’s very much like that.

I think it’s I misremember it maybe, but it’s I believe it’s a motorcycle gang and they’re they’re tough dudes and they come into town and they cause a lot of trouble.

They drink some pop and they leave.

Well, it was a different time.

They couldn’t have him doing heroin.

It’s funny, though, with that masculine image, though, and then it being a pop stand and then changing to popsicle, which is honestly not that masculine of an item at all.

Right.

Well, the pop stand, I mean, there are cultural notions around soda and places that kids gather.

I mean, there’s really what we’re talking about here is you’ve got to go back.

You can find it in the newspaper.

Screeds written against pool halls.

I mean, it’s in movies and plays and soda stands and restaurants and diners because that’s where the kids gathered.

And if the kids gathered, they must be up to trouble.

So it’s not so much the soda.

It’s the people who are attracted to it.

That makes perfect sense.

Cool.

Thanks for your call.

Really appreciate it.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for answering my question.

All right.

Take care.

All right.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

What do you say when you want to leave someplace?

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

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

At the top of the show, we were talking about cat’s eyes, those reflective markers on roads.

And it made me think of another of my favorite words,

Which is chatoyant.

Chatoyant. C-H-A-T-O-Y-A-N-T. Chatoyant. Yes. Cat-like. Yep. Yep. Chatoyant means glowing like a cat’s eye.

Oh, Chatoinian Tiles.

Yeah.

And that phenomenon where you see a cat’s eyes glowing is called eye shine.

Eye shine.

I’ve heard that one.

Yeah.

And it’s because there’s a little membrane behind the retina that reflects light back.

And eye shine is different in all different kinds of animals.

I remember in central Florida, I used to go wolf spider hunting.

They have Chatoinian Tiles as well?

Yes.

Yes, it’s crazy.

You can look up how to do this on the internet, but I used to do it as a kid looking for wolf spiders and alligators when I would go to a swamp.

Isn’t that cool?

That’s cool.

So in the cartoons, when they show eyes peering out of the darkness, it can actually happen.

Yeah, if you have a flashlight.

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And we’re on Twitter @wayword.

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

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

We’d love to get your messages at words@waywordradio.org or hit us up on Twitter @wayword and look for us on Facebook.

This program would not be possible without you.

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

Thanks also to senior producer Stefanie Levine, director and editor Tim Felten, director Colin Tedeschi, and production assistant Emma Kelman in San Diego.

In New York, we thank quiz guy John Chaneski, and that master of keeping it real, Paul Ruist at Argo Studios.

A Way with Words is an independent production of Wayword, Inc.

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

And I’m Grant Barrett.

So long.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.