Home » Episodes » Raining Cats and Dogs

Raining Cats and Dogs

Play episode

Get out your umbrellas — it’s raining pitchforks and … bullfrogs? This week, it’s odd expressions that mean “a heavy downpour.” Also, holistic vs. wholistic, recurrence vs. reoccurrence, flash drive vs. thumb drive, whether it’s good or bad to be jacked up, stomach Steinways and bunheads, and the origin of listless. And not to mince words, but what does the expression “not to mince words” really mean? This episode first aired May 26, 2012.

Classical Musician Slang

 In what profession would you deal with clams, footballs, hairpins, and axes? They’re all slang terms used by classical musicians.

Origin of Listless

 What’s the origin of the term listless? Does it mean you can’t find the piece of paper with the groceries you need? No. Listless shares a root with the English word lust. In its most literal sense, listless means “without lust,” or “lacking want or desire.”

Jacked-Up

 Is being jacked up a good thing or a bad thing? It depends. To jack up means “to raise up,” as with a car on a lift. But jack up also has a negative meaning, perhaps deriving from hijack or blackjack, suggesting that something’s been hurt or cheated.

Song Title Word Game

 Our Quiz Master John Chaneski has some answers to classic songs in this week’s puzzle about song titles in question form. For example, the answer “Because they’re too dumb to stay out of it” answers the musical question from Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?

Etymology of Mince

 What do we mean by the expression “not to mince words”? The New York Times’ Paul Krugman often uses this idiom meaning “to be straightforward and blunt.” The verb mince means “to make small,” and is a linguistic relative of such words as diminish, miniature, and minute. Mincing is what you do when you’re cutting onions into small pieces or diminishing the force of your speech by using euphemisms.

Stoved Fingers

 In an earlier episode, we discussed various meanings for the term stove up. One meaning of stove up is “to be in pain from work or exercise to the point where it’s hard to move.” Similarly, lots of athletes will get stoved fingers from getting them jammed with volleyballs or baseballs.

Flash Memory Device

 Do you store files on a flash drive, a thumb drive, a USB stick — or perhaps on a monkey? What do you call the little device that holds flash memory and goes into the USB drive of a computer? Some come in wild forms, like sushi or animals.

Stomach Steinway

 Did you ever take lessons to play the stomach Steinway? You know, the accordion? That’s another bit of musicians’ slang sent in by a listener, along with the term bunhead, which means “a ballet dancer.”

Recurrence vs. Reoccurrence

 Which is the better term, recurrence or reoccurrence? A look at the corpus of American literature confirms that recurrence is far and away the more commonly used word denoting “something that occurs more than once.”

Virginia Folk Sayings

 An old book of Virginia folk sayings contains such gems as “It’s as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth,” and “He can’t spell A-B-L-E.”

Raining Pitchforks

 What do you call a fierce rainfall? There are lots of vivid terms in this country besides “it’s raining cats and dogs.” Some Americans say “It’s raining pitchforks and hoe handles,” or “raining pitchforks and bullfrogs.” Or they might call a heavy rain a toadstrangler, a ditchworker, or stumpwasher. In other countries, this kind of cacophonous rain is denoted by lots of picturesque phrases involving imaginary falling things, including chair legs, female trolls, ropes, jugs, and even husbands.

Holistic vs. Wholistic

 If something pertains to a whole system or body, is it holistic or wholistic? Despite that tempting “w,” holistic is the correct term. It’s an example of folk etymology, the result of looking at the word whole and assuming that wholistic is the proper correlative.

New Slang from Potsdam

 If something’s soft and fuzzy, why not call it suvvy? Grant collected that bit of slang and more during a recent appearance in Potsdam, NY.

Demonyms

 Everyone knows New Yorkers and Angelenos, but what do you call someone from Sheboygan, Wisconsin? Demonyms, or the names for people from a given place, can get pretty complicated, but there are seven rules as drawn by George Stewart, and Paul Dickson’s book Labels for Locals has lots of other answers.

Chinese Proverb Fool

 A Chinese proverb says, “He who asks a question is a fool for a minute. He who does not remains a fool forever.”

This episode is hosted by Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett, and produced by Stefanie Levine.

Photo by Matt Brown. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Book Mentioned in the Episode

Labels for Locals by Paul Dickson

Music Used in the Episode

TitleArtistAlbumLabel
TapiocaJimmy McGriffOutside Looking InLester Radio Corp.
911 BeatTimmy Timeless35th and AdamsTimeless Takeover
SabotageBeastie BoysIll CommunicationCapitol Records
Let The SunshineDennis Coffey TrioHair and ThangsMaverick
Got Myself a Good ManPucho and His Latin Soul BrothersJungle Fire!Prestige
Sure ShotBeastie BoysIll CommunicationCapitol Records
Tom vs. GaltTimmy Timeless35th and AdamsTimeless Takeover
Our Day Will ComeThe SlackersBetter Late Than NeverMoon Ska
NamasteBeastie BoysIll CommunicationCapitol Records
Let’s Call The Whole Thing OffElla FitzgeraldElla Fitzgerald Sings The George and Ira Gershwin Song BookVerve

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

More from this show

Episode 1633

Gilded Age

In her sumptuous new memoir, Jamaican writer Safiya Sinclair describes her escape from a difficult childhood ruled by her tyrannical father. For Sinclair, poetry became a lifeline. Plus: that fizzy chocolate drink called an egg cream contains...

Episode 1531

Loaded for Bear

One way to make your new business look trendy is to use two nouns separated by an ampersand, like Peach & Creature or Rainstorm & Egg or … just about any other two-word combination. A tongue-in-cheek website will generate names like...

Recent posts

Episodes