Snaggletooth (episode #1560)

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. We heard from Heidi Hebron Marshall, who writes,

I have a job being a fake patient for medical students taking exams. It’s a very interesting and fun job, and it’s especially interesting now that the students have to give us physical exams over Zoom. When the students start asking, have you had fevers, chills, night sweats, headaches, joint pain, etc., I always think, here comes the laundry list. And that got me to thinking, what on earth is a laundry list? I definitely assume it’s a long written out list, but why would you need to write out a list, especially if someone else was doing your laundry for you?

So why would she list a bunch of symptoms and call it a laundry list? There’s no laundry on there.

Correct. And the reason is that it goes back to a time when people of a certain class sent their laundry out to be cleaned.

And, you know, it’s usually associated with things that are everyday or routine kind of drudgery. It’s not usually a positive connotation, is it?

I mean, you don’t really get it.

There’s a little bit of a negative strike to it, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Laundry list of complaints is a common way to put it.

Yeah, as opposed to compliments.

Right, you know, you don’t have a laundry list of compliments.

So, Heidi, thank you for your work.

Somebody’s going to be grateful that you’re doing that.

If you’ve got a question about an everyday expression or word that suddenly strikes you as inexplicable, give us a call, 877-929-9673, or share your language stories or thoughts to us in email, words@waywordradio.org.

Hello. Welcome to A Way with Words.

Hey, this is Daniel from Wilmington.

Hi, Daniel from Wilmington, Delaware, or North Carolina?

North Carolina, the cooler one.

Well, welcome, cool dude.

What can we do for you?

Hey, Daniel.

You know, this weird word situation that I always thought was strange and still haven’t been able to get to the bottom of is in English, we call our morning meal breakfast. Like breaking a fast, ending a fast.

And in Spanish, the word desayuno is like the exact same thing.

If you break down the word desayuno, you’ve got that prefix des. And then ayuno is the word for fast. It’s like to undo a fast.

And so I thought that was weird.

It’s like, how do you have two different languages come up with this same kind of literal meaning for their first meal of the day?

That’s weird.

You guys know the answer?

I thought maybe there was like a foreign exchange student or like a foreign exchange monk from Spain showed up in England and was like, hey, you know, we call this meal ending a fast. You guys should do that.

And the monks were like, that’s a great idea.

And then they started doing it.

Right on, yeah.

The Erasmus program for monks.

This is great.

Well, you’re right on track.

I mean, this has happened in more than two languages, as a matter of fact.

If you go back to Latin, the Latin word that means to fast is related not only to ayunar in Spanish, to fast, but also the word in French.

And so you get dejeuner in French and desayuno in Spanish, meaning breakfast, literally to break the fast.

How cool is that?

It’s pretty cool.

Yeah, the Latin word for empty, jejunus, it gives us other cool words, too, like the word jejun in English, which means sort of dull or insipid.

It comes from that Latin word that literally meant fasting or hungry.

It means empty.

Cool.

I feel a little smarter.

Well, I don’t know.

Did we tell you anything you didn’t know?

Some of those other Latin words I didn’t know, like the zizun thing.

Yeah.

But we got to chat with you, and that was a delight for us, so we appreciate it, Daniel.

Yeah.

Well, thank you.

It was fun being on the show.

All right.

Take care now.

Be well.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Thanks, Daniel.

Bye-bye.

Help us fill out those corners of our minds.

What are the words that you know in other languages for having breakfast?

877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org.

Remember that call we had a while back, Grant, that so many people responded to?

It was the one where someone was asking if there’s a word in English that’s the drink equivalent of feed.

You know, you feed somebody, but what’s the verb for giving a drink to somebody?

Remember that?

That’s right.

We got so many responses.

Yeah, a lot of people said you libate them, but that sounds almost obscene.

Yeah, and people were really, really struggling with that.

Some people suggested embeverage, which I kind of like, but it’s a little fancy.

And everybody was wondering, well, is there a language that does have a verb like that?

And in fact, there is.

It’s Hebrew.

I learned that from Kitty Keller, who’s a United Methodist pastor in Pennsylvania.

And the verb is lahashkot, which means to give drink to.

And you find it, for example, in Genesis, where Rebecca gives somebody water to drink and then also waters the camels.

It’s the same thing.

Okay, great.

So we’re going to borrow that right into English right away.

Sure.

Yeah, I don’t know how you would conjugate that.

I like hosh-coded my guest.

Yeah, come on over and I’ll hosh-coat you.

We’re a little hosh-coding here.

Grab one.

Grab one out of the fridge.

No, I don’t think that works.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name’s Katie and I’m a college professor calling from San Diego.

Well, welcome, Katie.

Hi, Katie.

What’s up?

Hi.

So as a college professor, I get a little bit more exposure than I would for someone my age to what the kids are saying these days.

And I’ve noticed I’m using the phrase low key in kind of an unusual way.

So I had always thought of low-key as kind of an adjective.

Like, you might describe a party as low-key or a laid-back person as low-key.

But the students now seem to be using it more like an adverb.

So, like, I’m low-key crushing on that guy from my statistics class.

Or, I was low-key lost in lecture today.

And I’ve just kind of been wondering, you know, when did people start using it this way?

And does it mean like secret, like it’s something they’re kind of embarrassed to admit, or does it still retain any of that like mildness?

Like is low-key bombing a test worse than or better than totally bombing a test?

So I’ve just been wondering about that.

Oh, fantastic.

This is good.

So you’re very observant.

I like that.

How long do you think you’ve been hearing this from your students?

Probably actually just starting this year at the beginning of the fall is when I first started noticing it, although I suppose it could have been around for longer.

It has been.

I can find examples of it on Twitter back to 2008, if you can believe that.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, but you’ve described low-key in exactly the way it’s being used, and you even hinted at one of the other ways it’s being used, and I’ll talk about that in a second, that’s a little less common.

So there are two different collections of college slang, one from UCLA by Pamela Monroe and her students, and one from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill from Connie Ebley and her students, and they both have recorded multiple instances of low-key being used more or less like you describe it.

The UCLA collection has low-key, and they gloss it, meaning they just kind of basically define it as kind of, he was low-key hitting on me, or I was low-key mad at her, or she low-key looks like Angelina Jolie.

Those are the examples they give.

And then the Chapel Hill collection from Connie Ebley and her students start recording it in their collections in 2013.

And they define it as with diminished feeling or intensity.

Low key, her haircut looks like a hamster stuck in a blow dryer.

So they use it there kind of as a sentence tag to put a hedge on something that’s really negative, to kind of diminish the negative effect of something that you have said or that you’re about to say.

Another example is, I low-key want to go to a cookout.

I mean, I kind of want to go.

I have a slight inclination to go to a cookout.

Yeah, my 20-year-old stepson uses low-key in a way that’s different from how I’m used to hearing it.

And I’ve also heard from my younger improv buddies, Allison, and I asked her about this.

And she said that to her, low-key means you’re interested in something, but you didn’t really expect to be drawn to it.

Or you’re interested in something, but not really enthusiastic enough to actively pursue it.

Like, I’ve been low-key looking at Crocs.

They look kind of cool.

Oh, yeah.

That makes sense.

So you’re right, Katie, when you say that it’s an adverb, and it modifies either an adjective or a verb in a way that it really plays off the normal meaning of low-key, which is not elaborate or showy or it’s muted or restrained.

And the original low-key comes from photography.

It’s about the way that you develop or present a photograph as muted or kind of a moody look to it.

A low-key photograph has a kind of a almost noir-ish, kind of a dusk or early morning look to it.

Wow.

That’s really cool.

I didn’t know that’s where it came from.

And I didn’t realize how much nuance there was to it.

Very cool.

Thanks so much.

We’d love it if you would be our field reporter and report back to us some other things that you learned from your students.

Please bring back more the farther we get away from college.

Yeah.

When I was in my 30s, I felt like I could fake it.

Now that I’m in my 50s, I just don’t feel like I can fake it.

Well, I’ll keep an ear out.

Thank you so much.

Take care.

Be well.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, we talk about slang and word histories and grammar and all kinds of things on this show,

And we’d love to talk with you.

You can do that by calling us, 877-929-9673, or send us an email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Fahrenheit 451 is Ray Bradbury’s most famous work, and it’s about a dystopian future where

Books are banned and burned, of course. And the title refers to the temperature at which book

Paper catches fire and burns. What I didn’t know until recently is that this book published in 1953

Included a run of 200 copies that were actually bound in asbestos.

That is amazing.

Where would they find those?

I guess those would be rare and prized in collectors.

Funny you should say that.

Yeah, yeah.

They’re at least $10,000.

They usually go for between $10,000 and $20,000.

So you can find these online, but I can’t imagine that they’re legal.

No.

I don’t know about legal, but they’re certainly something you don’t want to lick.

Yeah.

Yeah, I would think you would want to pay to get rid of them, but what do I know?

But a book about book burning certainly is a curiosity to begin with.

And then one that happens to be such a great work on top of it is another plus.

And then you do a stunt like that, well, right away you’re talking about something even better.

Yeah, it’s made me want to go back and read that, so I just might.

877-929-9673.

This show’s about language examined through family, history, and culture.

Stay tuned.

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 joining us now is our quiz guy, Mr. John Chaneski.

Hello, Martha.

Hello, Grant.

It’s so great to hear your voices again.

I’m eager to play with you.

It, I’ve got a game with me today that I hope you’ll like. It’s based on an online game called

Google Feud, which you may have heard of. In Google Feud, you’re presented with the start of

A Google search string, and you have to guess how Google’s predictive search feature offers to

Complete it. For example, if I enter, what is the tallest, dot, dot, dot, Google would predict

Building in the world and also mountain in the world and building in NYC, in that order,

Among others, usually with the most popular at the top. Now, I’ll give you the start of a Google

Search string. You tell me what Google would offer to complete it. All I need is for you to pick one

Of the top nine or 10 answers or so, and I’ll let each of you have an answer so we can get as many

Answers as we can. Okay? Okay. Great. Let’s go. Here’s the first one. First Google search string.

Where are my…

Glasses?

Glasses not on there.

Car keys.

Keys is actually fifth, yes.

Oh, keys?

Where are my keys?

People Google to figure out where their keys are, yes.

I hope that works.

That’d be wonderful.

I hope so, too.

I’ll try it myself.

Any other guesses?

Where are my packages?

Ooh.

No, no, no.

Where are my deliveries?

No, there’s similar ones on here.

The first one is, where are my Google photos?

There’s also some other good ones are, where are my kidneys?

I was going to say parts of the body.

There you go.

Where are my lymph nodes?

And similar to keys, where are my AirPods?

Oh.

Okay.

Yeah.

Here’s the next one.

How do you use a…

How do you use a…

Ooh, it’s hard to use that people would Google.

So they already know how to use a computer enough to Google.

I bet that could be a question, though.

That’s a good guess.

It’s not on here, though.

How do you use a slow cooker?

Ooh.

There’s one on here that is coffee-related.

Oh, how do you use an espresso machine?

Ooh.

No.

No?

It’s how to use a French press.

Oh.

Okay, good one.

Any other guesses?

There’s one on here that is grammar, writing related.

How do you use a thesaurus?

No.

A spell checker?

No.

A dictionary?

It’s how to use a semicolon.

Oh.

Don’t.

Here are a few of the other ones.

Now, this, of course, is actually giving us a good insight into what you guys want to learn how to use.

Yeah, right.

Number one is how do you use a bidet?

Really?

How do you use a protractor and how do you use a fire extinguisher?

Which you should really know how to use a fire extinguisher, really.

Before you have to Google it.

Yes, exactly.

If you’re Googling it and it’s warm, you should just get out of there.

Here’s the last one.

What is bigger than the…

What is bigger than the moon?

Moon’s not on here, but…

Sun.

The sun is on here.

Number two.

What is bigger than the…

Earth?

Universe?

Universe is number one.

People want to know what’s bigger than the universe.

Wow.

How about that?

Yeah.

The other answers are, what is bigger than the Milky Way?

What’s bigger than the solar system?

And what’s bigger than the blue whale?

No bread box in there?

No bread box.

No.

But nothing is as big as the love I have for you guys and the way you went through that quiz.

Thank you so much.

That was awesome.

Wow, that was a real mind expander, John.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, Google doesn’t know all, and you can Google and get a million results.

But if you want a good result and you want arbiters and judges of what quality language answers are,

Call A Way with Words, 877-929-9673.

Email Martha and me, words@waywordradio.org, and talk to us on Twitter @wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name’s Bethany. I’m calling from Ithaca, New York.

Hi, Bethany. Welcome to the show.

My question is, I was looking for a word that means to feel at the same time just desperately lonely,

But also absolutely reveling in your solitude.

Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Well, sure. Well, I pose the question to my friends.

I have a lot of friends who have degrees in English and linguistics and, you know, who speak different languages.

And just for the concept of the idea of feeling these two very different things, feeling so incredibly, horribly lonely, but also just really happy to be alone.

And no one could come up with anything, so they suggested that I coin a word.

So I did.

And the word I coined is dichosolosthemia.

That’s dichosolosthemia.

And I got there from dichotomy, the dicho for dichotomy, the dichotomy of feeling very, you know, happy, but also very depressed and lonely.

And the solace from solitude, because that’s what the dichotomous feeling is about.

And then since talking about feelings, and English likes to beat up other languages to steal from them,

I stole the anastemia from Greek.

The themia, so dichosolestemia.

And I don’t know.

That’s a really good explanation.

Sounds like a well-made word.

The feeling that you’re describing reminds me of breaking up with someone who’s bad for you, where you really missed the relationship.

Oh, yeah.

You needed to get rid of them.

Yeah.

Yeah, it is like that.

You’re right.

And, Bethany, I appreciate your reaching for Greek here, of course.

It’s often difficult to bring Greek into English and have it be, I don’t know.

I find it hard to describe feelings with Greek roots.

Somehow it feels kind of clinical to me.

So I guess I’m reaching for something from Anglo-Saxon, you know, that sort of more kind of earthy language.

I mean, I’m just making this up.

I mean, something like Gladlorn, you know, sort of like Lovelorn, but Gladlorn.

Oh, that’s nice.

Or forlorn and glad.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, you might enjoy.

Kind of like despair and despair.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like despair and despair.

I’m also thinking you might enjoy going and reading some Anglo-Saxon poetry in translation.

There’s some really great stuff.

There’s one old, old, old poem called The Wayfarer and another called The Wanderer and another called The Seafarer.

And they just really viscerally, I think, connote loneliness.

And I’m just wondering if there’s something from Anglo-Saxon, An haga win.

An haga is solitary and win is happiness.

I’ve got one more for you, Bethany, and this is from Will Gelbert’s book, Word Wise.

This book just came out, and he’s got a section in here for these supposedly untranslatable words.

Of course, there’s no such thing as an untranslatable word.

Hard or difficult to translate words, but it might take a paragraph rather than a single word.

This word is a German word, Waldseemkeit, and it means basically forest loneliness.

It’s a literary word, basically woodland solitude.

You’re in the forest without other people, but you’re not alone because you’re connected to nature.

Oh, I love that.

How do you spell that?

Wow, that’s beautiful.

W-A-L-D-E-I-N-S-A-M-K-E-I-T.

Yeah, and I got that from Will Gelbert’s book, Word Wise.

Wald Einstamkeit.

That sounds a lot like it.

I like all our suggestions.

It’s more about the intersection between these feelings, right?

Right, right.

It’s something you feel but can’t articulate?

Yes.

Well, you know what, Bethany?

The really cool thing is that even if people are listening to this program in solitude, we can all come together and try to come up with more words to describe this feeling.

So I’m looking forward to hearing from our listeners about how do you put into one word the feeling of being lonely, but at the same time, okay with that loneliness.

Actually reveling in it a little bit.

Thank you, Bethany, for bringing up this topic.

Really appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me on.

All right.

Be well.

Take care.

You too.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

And if you’ve got a word for Bethany, one you’ve made or one that you found, let us know, 877-929-9673.

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

Here’s a word that was a new one on me, HOGO, H-O-G-O. Do you know this one, Grant?

No. Is that an abbreviation or an acronym?

You would think it would be something very modern, but actually it’s a very old word that means stench or a strong or unpleasant smell.

Hogo. Any connections to anything else?

Well, it’s connected to French and ogou or high flavor.

Yeah, I guess that’s a high flavor.

The stench of the sewers is a high flavor indeed.

Yeah, yeah. The ogou is originally defined as anything that excites the appetite and is put into sauces, like pepper or lemon or something like that.

The word goes back all the way to the 17th century, talking about a really strong flavor or like really gamey meat.

But hougou, it looks like such a modern term to me, but it’s not.

The reason I thought of sewers is because the word for sewers is egu, E-G-O-U-T.

Oh, really?

In French?

Yeah, with an acute accent on the E.

Oh, wow. Okay, well, there you go.

Call us with your language question, 877-929-9673.

Hi there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Michelle in Valdosta, Georgia.

Hey, Michelle.

And I really enjoyed the show. Thank you. Hi.

I hope you don’t mind my having a potty mouth on National Public Radio.

The word I’d like you to investigate is doniker, which in circus lingo means a bathroom or any place it serves as such.

It’s been used for many, many years, going back who knows how long, and I have no idea where the word came from.

Michelle, what got you curious about the word doniker?

Well, it was a common word that we used every day.

I was a circus performer for over 20 years, and that was what it was in circus lingo.

I have to go to the Donnaker was a common expression.

And there’s a lot of other words, too, but Donnaker seems to be the one that was used most often.

You were going to the Donnaker between doing what in a circus?

I was what they call generally useful.

I was actually on circuses, magic shows, and sideshows, and I have done everything.

Generally useful is if they need a pretty girl in an act, you’re it.

I’ve had my head cut off.

I hung 50 feet in the air doing aerial ballet.

No net underneath me in Japan.

What else?

I was a clown.

I was a dancer.

I was a choreographer.

Just you name it, and I did it.

I started out as a juggler and rode elephants.

What else?

Oh, it handled snakes, of course.

Of course.

And I was Spidora.

I was Spidora, the spider lady.

I had eight big, very hairy legs.

And the funny thing about getting my head chopped off was my sister did an ancestry, and it turns out we’re distant relatives of Marie Antoinette.

No.

So it was perfect.

I used to get guillotined eight times a day on the sideshow.

But it was a lot of fun.

I got to travel and made lots of good friends.

But you also used a Donaker, or you called the restroom the Donaker.

And now you’re adding word historian to all those other skills.

Well, that’s nice.

Yeah, I suppose so.

There are a lot of different spellings for this.

Let’s just get this down so everyone knows what we’re talking about.

Doniker is often spelled D-O-N-I-C-K-E-R, or a double in in the middle.

Sometimes you’ll hear it as Donaghan, like the Irish name.

Sometimes Dunaghan or Dunakin or lots and lots of different spellings.

But generally, it’s believed to have come from two old, old words meaning dung house, D-U-N-G, house.

So it’s the place where you put your dung.

And as a matter of fact, the word dunny, which means privy or outhouse or toilet, and you’ll still sometimes hear it in Australia and New Zealand, dunny comes probably from the same origins as Donnigan.

Oh, okay.

Or Donnaker, yeah.

Well, that makes sense. All right.

So yeah, Donnaker came from Dunnigan, and Dunnigan means dung house.

And there’s another word. So dung, the word dung, D-U-N-G, comes from that first part, the dung part.

They’re related to the same root. And there was an old word, dana, meaning human fecal matter.

And there was a term, the dana drag. That was the night soil man’s cart.

He was the fellow who would come around for the contents of your chamber pots.

Have you seen the second season of the television show Miracle Workers?

Steve Buscemi plays a role on that where he is the night soil man.

Well, he comes around with this cart collecting the human waste.

Okay, well, that makes sense then because the word that goes along with Doniker is donication, and we all know what that is.

What’s a donication where you spend too long of a john on your phone?

That’s it.

Oh, Michelle.

But we’ve got a lot of different variations on this word back to the 1700s.

And it does show up in the language of circus and carnival workers as early as the 1930s, although no doubt it’s older because the lingo of circus and carnival workers is this kind of treasured lore that was kept private for a long time until language historians and word historians really started to pay attention to it.

And it wasn’t well chronicled until the last 120 or 130 years or so.

Mm-Interesting.

Yeah, well, we’re using a fairly old word that has lots of history.

Oh, but you being a part of the circus family is a treasured tradition.

You are centuries and centuries of lore and folklore and superstition and tradition.

You’re just one in a long line of this stuff being passed from person to person.

So using Doniker is just one of many things and tales that you could probably tell us that you were a part of.

Definitely.

I started in the business as what they call a first of May, somebody brand new, in 1976.

A first of May.

So that’s the movie, right? Because in the old days, circuses used to go out on the first of May.

Oh, Grant and I are both scribbling madly.

So if you were new, you were a first of May.

I love it.

That’s wonderful.

Well, Michelle, it has been a delight to talk to you.

I do want you to call us anytime you think of something else that you know that everyone would love to hear, okay?

Okay.

Well, thank you.

Nice talking to you.

You too.

Take care and be well.

I really appreciate knowing.

That’s great.

All right.

Yep.

Take care.

Don’t count.

Bye-bye.

Thanks, Michelle.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Cheers.

Bye-bye.

Well, we know that Michelle isn’t the only one with a rich linguistic history.

We know that.

So give us a call and tell us about yours, 877-929-9673, or send your stories about the slang from your corner of the world.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

I’ve been thinking about the word eek, as in to eek out a living or eek out a win.

Some people misspell it as E-E-K, but it’s actually E-K-E.

And you don’t see it that much.

It’s from an old word that means augmentation or an increase.

It comes from Old English aeaca, meaning addition or supplement, and that makes it a relative of words like auxiliary and augment, a very distant relative of those words.

But it also is buried inside another more common English word, which is nickname.

I thought you were going to get there.

Yeah, yeah. Originally, nickname was an eek name. That is an additional name. And then through the process of misdivision, an eek name became a nickname.

So the A-N dropped its N, went from the article A-N to the word eek and became a nickname, nickname.

Yeah, yeah. Great example of misanalysis of a word.

You know, I’d love to hear people’s nicknames, by the way.

We’ve never really talked much about those.

That might be a good call out.

What do you think?

Oh, I think it’d be a wonderful one, Gertie.

Okay, Martita.

If you’ve got a clever nickname, what do they call you and why do they call you it?

Let us know.

We’d love to hear the story.

877-929-9673.

Email words@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.

There have been many translations of the Old English poem Beowulf over the years, including by some of the greats like J.R.R. Tolkien and Seamus Heaney.

But there’s a new one by Maria Devana Headley, and Grant is nothing short of astonishing.

One reviewer described it as electrifying, and I’d say that’s just about right.

The poem Beowulf, it’s the story of the mighty hero’s battle with monsters and a dragon, may have been written as early as the 8th century. Nobody’s really sure.

But one of Hedley’s many insights is that this epic tale is one that was meant to be shouted over a bunch of noisy people getting more and more drunk on mead.

And so she imagines this poem being told by the old guy sitting at the end of the bar from time to time, pounding his glass and demanding another.

In fact, if you read Old English, you know that it often has this kind of pounding, straightforward rhythm.

It’s marked by lots and lots of alliteration.

And it’s very down-to-earth language.

It’s not cerebral.

Somebody once compared Old English poetry to the sound of a sack of potatoes being emptied.

And it also has the occasional poetic kenning that we’ve talked about before, like referring to blood as battle sweat or the sun as the sky candle.

And Hedley synthesizes all this with language that’s modern and inventive.

She really creates something new.

She does it in a way that I can’t really describe, except to say that what she does with Beowulf is sometimes like what Lin-Manuel Miranda did with Hamilton.

So her version isn’t a strict word-for-word rendering, and there’s even the occasional profanity.

But as she says, if you’re looking for the courtly romance in Nights, there are other translations.

And let me give you an example.

One nagging problem has always been how to translate that first word of the poem, you know, what.

And what has been translated as behold or listen or attend and even what-ho.

Basically, it’s a wind-up that signals that a story is coming.

Well, Hedley renders this as, bro.

And it could sound gimmicky, sure, but immediately you can hear this guy at the end of the bar commanding your attention.

Because he’s saying, bro, I’m about to tell you something amazing.

I saw it with my own eyes.

And really, the way to enjoy this, in my opinion, is to listen to the audio version of the book.

It’s read by the actor J.D. Jackson.

And I was absolutely captivated.

That sounds amazing, Martha.

We’ve got to put a link to that on the website.

But you have to perform first for a second.

You know the first line or so by heart of the original Beowulf, right?

Yeah, I do.

I mean, I love the sound of it, but in modern English, it makes no sense.

It goes, you know, it doesn’t make sense to the modern ear.

But I can hear the rhythm that you were talking about right away.

Yeah, and the way that she renders that is, bro, tell me we still know how to talk about kings.

In the old day, everyone knew what men were.

Brave, bold, glory-bound.

Only stories now.

But I’ll sound the Speardane song hoarded for hungry time.

So you hear that alliteration too, but it’s thrilling.

So she doesn’t go completely modern, but she’s got enough of it there that you can engage with both your appreciation of the literary history of the text, but also the modern ear.

So you’ve got the two parts of you kind of engaging at once.

That’s exactly right.

And the way that she puts it in the introduction, and I know you’ll appreciate this, is she says, language is a living thing, and when it dies, it leaves bones.

I dropped some fossils here next to some newborns.

Oh, lovely. Right.

That’s totally it, right?

Yeah, yeah. So she’s creating almost this new language.

And it’s, again, I think about Hamilton where you are watching the beginning of it and you think he can’t keep this up for two and a half hours.

And two and a half hours later, you’re there in tears because this story has so captivated you.

So it’s kind of like that.

I might describe, I might take a different metaphor and describe it as when they’re digging in Rome for a new metro or subway, and they come across a villa, a Roman villa from centuries ago, and they’re putting something in so modern, and yet they find something so ancient.

And it’s people living in these old spaces with new ideas.

That’s perfect.

So I highly recommend that.

It’s the new translation of Beowulf by Maria Davana Headley.

Lovely. Thank you, Martha. We know we have a lot of readers in our crowd, and we know there are more books published every year than anyone could get to, and we’d love to hear your recommendations. Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send the links and the titles to us, words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Grant. This is Michelle calling from Michigan.

Hi, Michelle. Welcome to the show.

Hey, Michelle.

Hi, thank you. I was calling because of an expression that I read in my art history textbook. It has to do with the phrase, garner the laurels.

It was in a passage about daguerreotypes, and one of the inventors had died, and the other inventor got all of the credit.

And I was just wondering where that phrase came from and what getting all the credit has to do with leave.

Specifically, they said that one of the inventors died, leaving the other to garner the laurel.

Okay. So the other one, the one who didn’t die, got all the credit then, right?

Correct. He even got the type of image named after him.

Oh, right, right, right. Okay.

That refers to the fact that in ancient Greece, winners of competitions, like athletic competitions, were awarded crowns that were made from the fragrant leaves of bay laurels.

You know, just like the bay leaf that you put in your soup.

They would have these wreaths of bay leaves.

And I’m sure you’ve seen pictures of them on statues or in illustrations.

But we get terms like laureate from that, like Nobel laureate is somebody who’s won the laurels, who’s won that crown as a prize, or poet laureate.

In Italy, laureati are graduates of an educational institution.

So it’s a reward based on that old tradition of crowning somebody with a crown made out of those leaves specifically.

Wow, that is really cool.

That is not where I would have thought.

But you’re right.

I have seen images of that crown that you’re talking about.

And do you know what that crown was called in ancient Greek?

This is also really cool.

I do not know.

It was called the Stephanos, and we get a couple of modern English names from that term.

Oh, like Stephan.

Mm—

Stephan, Stephen.

Yeah, Stephanie.

Yep, yep.

Esteban in Spanish.

All of those go back to the Greek word for crown.

Wow, how neat.

How cool, right?

So the next time you’re making soup and you put in a bay leaf, you can think about that etymology.

Well, I will certainly be thinking about that whenever I hear that phrase.

Thank you so much for that explanation.

A long-time listener, first-time caller.

Oh, that’s very nice.

Excellent.

We look forward to you being a second-time caller sometime.

Yes, please.

And take care of yourself.

Be well.

Thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

Okie doke.

Bye-bye.

Hey, we’re here to explain those expressions that just don’t make sense.

877-929-9673.

Or we’re here to hear you explain something to us.

words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name’s Camden. I’m calling from Genoa, Alaska.

Oh, hey, Camden. Welcome.

Hi, what’s up?

Well, there’s this word. I picked it up sort of by osmosis.

The word is gaffle.

So the usage of it would be, say you go over to your friend’s house

And you want to grab a Coke from the fridge.

You know, you might say, hey, friend, I’m going to gaffle a Coke from the fridge.

And it’s this sort of, I’m going to take this thing,

And I’m not really asking permission, but I know that you would tell me yes if I was.

You might say snag.

Hey, man, you mind if I snag your shovel?

But it’s this word gaffle.

And I don’t really know where it comes from or where the usage of what it means.

I picked it up from a D&D group in Anchorage.

Is it something you guys know about?

Gaffle.

So G-A-F-F-L-E?

That would be my guess, yeah.

And you picked it up from a Dungeons & Dragons group.

Was it part of a character somebody had built or just in casual conversation?

Oh, yeah. It was just really, I mean, the players, not so much from the game itself.

It was the group of people that used the word.

Because there’s something particular about this word in that it tends to be more common in the northeast of the United States and in the east of Canada.

So I was just kind of surprised to see it pop up in Alaska.

Was anybody in that group from elsewhere in the country?

Yeah. The one, the closest, I would say, is a gentleman from Missouri.

Oh, well, that’s not near the Northeast, but yeah.

And I’m from Missouri, and as far as I know, nobody uses gaffel.

But the other thing that interests me is that Alaska is known as a, has a lot of fishing in it,

And gaffle is related to a whole bunch of words that have to do with hooks and hook poles and forks and other things like that.

Fork-like implements and hook-like implements.

Including the word gaff.

Gaff is a pole with a hook on it that you use to bring stuff in from the water, to pull fish in from the water.

And there’s a rather renowned book of etymology by Hensley Wedgwood.

What a name that is.

Hensley Wedgwood.

1872.

And he points out that all these different languages in Europe, particularly the Germanic and Scandinavian languages,

Have words for these hooked and forked instruments that seize or hold fast.

For example, in Danish and Swedish, they have gaffel, but it’s E-L at the end, G-A-F-F-E-L.

And it refers to the same nautical gaff tool.

So it’s spelled gaffel, but it means gaff.

And that same word exists in other forms in Germanic and Celtic languages.

And it means fork or fork-like tools.

So all of these are related.

And so that brings us to English, American English.

And in the Dictionary of American Regional English,

We have as early as 1900, gaffel shows up as a verb,

Meaning to grasp, to seize, to take hold of, to carry, to steal, to swindle, to arrest.

And that’s what you have.

I think in there we have to seize or to grasp or to steal is kind of what you were doing with your friend’s coke when you show up, or your friend’s shovel, right?

Right, exactly, yeah.

It still shows up today, you’ll find it in hip-hop lyrics, actually, meaning to rob, to steal, to run a scam, or to be harassed by the police or to be arrested by the police.

So this word has multiple lives, not only in fishing and not only in casual slang,

But in black English and in hip-hop language and in street language as well.

So it’s lived multiple lives over the centuries.

Oh, that’s fascinating. I didn’t know any of that stuff.

Yeah, so gaff and gaffel are definitely related to this long history of Germanic words.

They all basically have something to do with seizing, taking,

I know we’re related to words having to do with hooked or forked implements or instruments.

Oh, all right.

Well, great.

And what do you have at the end of your arm?

You have a hooked or forked instrument.

Yeah, right.

So you’re fishing in your friend’s fridge.

Right, exactly.

All right.

Well, thanks for answering my question.

I really appreciate it.

Well, it’s our pleasure.

Yeah, you gaffled an answer.

Take care, Camden.

Appreciate the call.

You too.

All right.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

If you’d like us to find the treasure inside of some word that you know, give us a call at 877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org or chat with us on Twitter @wayword.

Here’s a rare word that I think is worth reviving.

It’s simmachy, S-Y-M-M-A-C-H-Y, simmachy.

So does that first part have something to do with symmetry?

It has to do with togetherness, for sure.

Togetherness, okay.

And to make something together, does that last part have something to do with machy making?

I don’t know.

It has to do with fighting because in ancient Greek, machy is to fight.

And so a legomachy, for example, is a verbal argument.

Oh, right. Of course.

Yeah. Simachy is based on a word that the ancient Greeks had for an alliance in war.

And it’s not used that often.

When it is used, it’s used in a political sense of, you know, countries having a simachy.

You know, they have an alliance to fight against something else.

But I think it could be used more generally.

You know, why not have a simarchy with other people, an alliance against a common enemy?

Oh, so you could have an alliance, say, against pollution from a factory down the river or an alliance against trash along the beach or something like that.

Yeah, anything that’s threatening your well-being.

Very good. Simarchy. I like the S-Y-M-M-A-C-H-Y.

Mm— And another word in this family of fighting words is schymarchy, which comes from the Greek word for shadow.

So Skyamake is shadowboxing.

Oh, I love the sound of that.

That one’s just fun to say.

Right?

Skyamake.

Yeah.

877-929-9673.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Calling you from La Jolla, Max Jennings.

Hi, Max.

Welcome to the show.

What’s up?

Hi, Max.

Thank you.

I’ve been doing volunteer work at the San Diego Humane Society for about three or four years

In adoptions.

And unfortunately, about two years ago, we lost our cocker spaniel to cancer.

So we waited about four or five months, and then I was at work,

And one of my coworkers, one of my colleagues said, have you seen Ben?

So I go in to see Ben, and this gorgeous, falling in love immediately dog

Comes over to me and puts his two front paws up on my lap, and I look down at him, and he just

Wants to lick me and give me kisses and what have you, and he turns sideways, and I see something

Kind of unusual about his mouth. So I finally got him to hold still enough, and there is this

Snaggletooth, it’s called, on the lower left-hand side that wraps, goes out of his mouth, and comes up over his upper lip. Where does the term snaggletooth come from? Where did it originate?

It makes sense if you know that the root of snaggletooth is simply snag, which in the 16th century meant a stump of a tree or a branch, something that’s been like a short, jagged projection, a tree branch that’s been broken off. And later on, you get the idea of a tree or a branch in the water that maybe causes a snag when your boat is going in the water.

Okay.

And I was thinking, you know, maybe it was something like this, something that caught on something. Like if you’re wearing a sweater and you’re walking by a bush or a tree and it snags on that. And that’s the only thing I could think of.

Right.

That’s the same idea.

Yeah.

You have that little tooth projecting that same way.

Okay.

Well, thank you for letting me know that. I never thought of it kind of like that angle.

Well, Max, it sounds like you both lucked out. So thank you for your work with the Humane Society, and thank you for calling. And thank you for your stories. You’ve warmed our hearts. Take care of yourself and the dog, right?

Thank you, folks. Have a great day. Take care.

All righty. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Thanks to senior producer Stefanie Levine, editor Tim Felten, and production assistant Rachel Elizabeth Weisler. You can send us messages, subscribe to the podcast and newsletter, and catch up on hundreds of past episodes at waywordradio.org.

Our toll-free line is always open in the U.S. and Canada, 877-929-9673, or email us words@waywordradio.org.

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

Many thanks to Wayword Board member and our friend Bruce Rogow for his help and expertise. Thanks for listening. I’m Grant Barrett.

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

Bye-bye.

Bye.