Spinning Cookies (episode #1618)

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

And I’m Martha Barnette. I want to recommend a book that’s been around for a few years, but I never tire of going back to it. It’s called The Public Library, a photographic essay, and it’s a celebration of America’s public libraries. It features 150 gorgeous photos by Robert Dawson, and it also has essays contributed by Bill Moyers, Ann Patchett, Anne Lamott and others. But Grant, my favorite line in the whole book is from Barbara Kingsolver.

In her essay, she writes about how her local librarian helped her catch the scent of a world beyond anything she’d ever imagined. And she says getting to read about other people’s lives snapped her out of her surly adolescence. And she writes, I’m of a fearsome mind to throw my arms around every living librarian who crosses my path on behalf of the souls they never knew they saved.

Oh, I love that. A fearsome mind to throw my arms around librarians. And it helps that one of them is my mother-in-law, who is a lovely woman.

Oh, yeah?

Yeah, she’s a great librarian. And she worked for years at a great library in Grinnell, Iowa.

No kidding.

When you first started talking, Martha, I thought you were going to say, there’s a building that I keep going back to, and it’s the public library, because that’s true for me and my family. When we travel, not only do we go to museums and parks and zoos, we also often go to libraries, sometimes just in between other appointments, just to see what they are. And sometimes they’re ordinary buildings, sometimes they’re amazing, but sometimes they’re astonishingly wonderful with little exhibits in the foyer of local art and local authors and sometimes the children’s reading areas are so adorable. They’re with so much care taken and little crafts that the kids have done with whoever is in charge of the area and they have such personality and it’s a great way to get a read on a community in a town that sometimes you don’t get even at the local museum.

Well, if you’d like to share a story of a librarian who’s made a difference for you or a library that’s made a difference for you, give us a call 877-929-9673 or send us an email. The address is words@waywordradio.org. Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hey, this is Todd from Western Kentucky.

Hello, Todd from Western Kentucky. What’s up?

Hey, I have a couple of phrases, quick backstory, growing up in the South, learning how to drive and having fun, spinning the car around in the gravel or out in the field, we called that cutting donuts. And anyone you ask is going to tell you that.

Hey, what do you call that?

Oh, we call it cutting donuts.

So in the early to mid-80s, I was able to take a trip out to Wessington Springs, South Dakota, pheasant hunt with a friend. And just in conversation out there one evening, we had a Suburban we were driving around in, and one of the locals said, we need to go spin some cookies. And my friend and I had no idea what they were talking about, and we couldn’t understand.

Spin some cookies.

And they kept on spinning cookies. And so, yeah, so the short of it was finally we said, oh, you mean cutting donuts? And they were like, what do you mean cutting donuts? And so we finally figured it out that, you know, in our part of the United States, it was called cutting donuts. And in their part of the world, it was spinning cookies. And I just have always marveled over that.

The fact that they’re two pastries that I enjoy. And they’re both round. How about that?

Yeah, they go around.

Todd, I’m struck by the fact that in the middle of pheasant hunting in South Dakota, someone felt the sudden urge to go to cut donuts or to spin some cookies.

Well, you got to realize that if, you know, if the birds are not flying, you know, you got to have some kind of fun, right?

Todd, we also need to know what your preferred surface is. Do you like just dirt or what?

Well, you know, gravel’s great because, you know, it slings it all over. But it’s probably pretty hard on the paint, too. But, I mean, dirt, grass. I don’t do mini donuts anymore. I guess the last donuts I did was a number of years back when my kids were young and there was a little snow on the ground. And we were leaving to go to some families for Christmas, and I took off down the hill in the four-wheel drive and spun it around a couple of times. The kids just loved it. My wife didn’t enjoy it as much as they did.

Well, Todd, I’ve got to tell you, I’m from Kentucky, too, and I always heard it as doing donuts. Cutting donuts is a new one on me.

Okay, doing donuts.

Yep, I’ll go with that.

Doing donuts is all over the country. And cutting cookies is a new one on me, too. Making cookies, spinning cookies. I think those are the two main ones. But there’s also the term pull a Brody. Do you know that one?

Let’s go pull some Brody.

No, no, I never heard of pulling a Brody. Who’s Brody?

Steve Brody, back in 1886, was a New York City bookmaker who supposedly tried to win a bet by jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge. And a friend of his picked him up out of the water. But everybody always suspected that what actually happened was they threw a dummy off the Brooklyn Bridge. And then it just looked like he had jumped off the bridge. And so to pull a Brody, named after Steve Brody, came to mean taking a fall or or faking something or or doing some kind of stunt that was foolhardy, which, you know, could apply to doing donuts in somebody’s front yard.

Especially if it’s the mayor.

Yeah.

Fantastic. I have marveled over that ever since I heard it. The fact that, you know, pastries, you know, number one, and doing a donut or cutting a donut or spinning cookies, it’s pretty funny. You know, it’s like at what state did they decide they didn’t like donuts anymore and they wanted to go to cookies, you know? I’m surprised nobody spins a pizza, you know, or cuts a pizza.

Right.

New Jersey and New York, maybe, if they spin a pizza.

Well, I think I’m going to migrate into doing a Brody. That’s a good one.

Todd, thank you so much for your call and sharing your thoughts and memories. We really appreciate it.

Yeah, thanks for this great question.

Thank you so much.

All right, bye-bye.

Enjoy the show.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye, Todd.

We love the regionalisms, not just in the United States, but Canada and Mexico and wherever you happen to be, share yours with us. You know, you’ve traveled somewhere, you moved somewhere, you went to school in another province or state, and they said something different, but you knew what they meant. Those are the things we want to hear about. 877-929-9673 is toll free in the United States and Canada. And you know, we have numbers in the UK and Mexico, and you can find those and a bunch of other ways to reach us on our website at waywordradio.org/contact.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Rebecca from Charlotte, North Carolina. I have a question that has been going around in my head for decades, and that is I’m from the eastern part of North Carolina, and when I was a child, I’ve got three older brothers and lots of cousins, but my grandmother, who was born in 1897, so she was already older when I was born, but whenever she would take care of us and we were going to go outside or go to a friend’s house or play in the woods or something, she never said, watch out for those snakes or be careful crossing the road or any direct thing like that. She always just said, be particular. And I’ve never heard it anywhere else. And I just wonder where that might come from. I can just picture her like out on the porch with her hands on her hips maybe or arms crossed. This is very, very stoic.

Very stoic.

Stoic.

Okay. And she was advising all of you to be particular. That’s such an interesting usage of the word particular. And it’s something that you will hear in the South and South Midlands of the United States.

And it does mean, as you suggested, to be careful or cautious. You know, be particular when you cross the street.

And it goes back to the idea of particular meaning precise or fastidious or exacting.

You’re just paying extra attention.

And it’s just a really beautiful way to advise that.

Do you use it now?

No, but I think I might because it’s been on my mind for a while now.

Yeah, I just think it’s a lovely linguistic heirloom. I’d love to see you carry it on.

Well, do you know where it comes from?

Well, yeah, the word particular itself goes way back. It goes all the way back to Latin.

It has to do with a little bitty part. It comes from words that mean little part, and it has to do with…

Oh, particulate.

Yeah, it’s like particulate.

Yeah, yeah, just, and being very exacting about little things.

And I know that we’ve seen bee particular around in the southern United States since at least the mid-19th century.

Yeah, and you also hear it in southern Appalachia.

So by South Midlands, that’s like the southern part.

It’s kind of like what touches the northern part of the south.

So people who are listening in those regions may have heard it as well.

Well, I really appreciate your answer, and I like it a lot.

It really makes so much sense.

I agree with you completely.

I think it’s just really beautiful.

Well, I thank you so much.

And y’all be particular.

We will.

Take care of yourself.

You do, Rebecca.

You be particular as well.

Bye-bye.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

We know you’ve got generations of experience in the language that you speak.

Sometimes it’s your grandparents. Sometimes it’s horizontal. It’s what your cousin said at a family reunion. Or maybe it’s a distant family that you met just once.

We’d like to hear how your family talks, whether it’s in your own home or it’s in the home of somebody you visited in another country.

Call us, 877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org. Or if you’re somewhere else in the world besides North America, you can find lots of ways to reach us on our website at waywordradio.org.

We heard from Sally Shea in Richardson, Texas.

Sally writes that her mother’s name before marrying was Mary Chevalier, and her middle name was a family name, Knight, K-N-I-G-H-T, and that made her full name Mary Knight Chevalier.

And, of course, all the folks who speak French who are listening right now are probably smiling because in French, Chevalier means knight, which makes her mother’s name Merry Night-Night.

So it’s like Merry K-N-I-G-H-T, K-N-I-G-H-T. Merry Night-Night.

My at Mezo’s best friend was named Irene Goodnight. There was a whole family of good knights, and her best friend was the oldest, Irene.

Irene Goodnight. And that’s a song, right?

It is indeed.

Sing that for me, Martha.

No, thanks.

Well, if you want to sing Irene Goodnight into our voicemail, the number is 877-929-9673.

Or you can send us a voice note on WhatsApp or by email. Just go to our website at waywordradio.org/contact.

More about what you say and why you say it.

Stick around for more of A Way with Words.

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, John Chaneski.

Hey, John.

Hey, Martha.

Hey, Grant.

How are you guys?

Hey, bud.

You know, we’ve done quizzes before about homophones. And of course, in homonyms, I’m sure, I’ve lost count. But I think this is the first time I’ve attempted a quiz about homographs.

Now, as you know, homographs are two words that are spelled the same, but have different meanings and sometimes often different pronunciations.

All the pairs we’re talking about today have different pronunciations.

For example, suppose I commissioned a painting of the planets, but the artist included the imaginary lines about which each planet rotated. I might ask him to get rid of those.

Then I’d have to wait while he axes axes.

Got it?

Yeah.

Now, that’s not a good example I know, but I’ve saved the best for the quiz.

So here we go.

Okay.

I was watching a movie about a medieval siege of a castle. They had these tall, multi-tiered constructions on wheels, which were yanked up to the castle walls.

Now, what would you call a serf whose job it was to pull along one of these portable, mass-like structures?

A serf who pulled one of these structures. They would be…

Is this a military term?

No, no, no. This is just a common word.

A common word.

What do you call a tall structure, multi-tiered structure?

Oh, it’s not the name of the serf. It’s the name of the structure?

Well, we’re going to say what it is this guy is doing.

I know what it is.

Oh, I see.

What do you got, Martha?

It’s a tower tower.

He’s a tower tower.

Yes, nicely done.

Oh, I see.

Gotcha.

All right.

Hey, remember those novelty fish trophies that used to sing songs? Suppose you purchased one and you found he had a very, very low vocal range.

What is that?

It’s a bass bass.

Bass bass, yeah.

If you’re a ship’s captain with a certain flair, you might eschew a figure of a woman for the prow of your ship and instead opt for a colorful ribbon tied in a fancy knot.

What’s that?

A bow bow.

A bow bow, yeah, or bow for your bow, a bow bow.

I’m writing a book about the periodic table, including short articles for each of the elements. What I need is a strong opener for the article about the heavy metal whose atomic number is 82.

What would that be?

Lead lead?

Lead lead?

My lead lead, yes, exactly.

Not that I know all the elements. I was just thinking about that.

Well, yeah, I happened to know that one.

Very good.

Now we all know what number 82 is.

There we go.

You know how they say time flies when you’re having fun? I’ve only been with you guys for about 60 seconds, but it seems like a very, very, very tiny amount of time.

What’s that?

A minute minute.

A minute minute, yes.

Now, of course, we live in the future. When I was in grade school, I had to create dioramas and show them on my desk. Now, my kids can make them online and use a computer to display images of them on the wall.

What does it do?

Project projects?

Yes, it projects projects.

Nicely done.

And those are my homographs for today.

I hope you like them.

You were great, John. Thanks.

This show’s about language and everything related to it.

Give us a call. We’ll talk about it.

Slang, new words, grammar, something weird you heard, something the grandkids said, something you said.

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

Hello. You have A Way with Words.

Hey, this is Jeffrey May. I’m calling from Montreal.

And I used to live in Nova Scotia. And my God, there are many, many regionalisms from the Maritimes in Canada.

People use the word some, S-O-M-E, to mean something like very or quite or really like, that’s some good, or she’s some pretty.

And if they want to emphasize that a little bit, they might say, she’s right some pretty.

So these are things I’ve never heard anywhere else in North America, but it certainly sounds like Nova Scotia when I hear that.

Yeah, you definitely hear that in Nova Scotia.

Of course, there it’s some cold a lot of the time, right?

Yeah, some windy, I’ll tell you.

It’s very windy.

Anything else fun you heard there?

Well, the more peculiar one was the following. And I don’t know if you know about this or if you’ve heard it anywhere else, but a very big inhalation when people are saying, yeah.

And that really is so Nova Scotian.

So you’re having a conversation with somebody. You know, it’s almost like you’re hiccuping. Like, you know, you’re having a conversation and somebody’s agreeing with you and they’ll go, and you hardly hear anything except the inhalation.

And that’s so peculiar and so cool.

Oh, yeah. That’s called the pulmonic aggressive. And it’s, yeah, it’s definitely a characteristic of Newfoundland and Labrador English as well as Nova Scotia.

Again, that same part of the country.

So you’ve heard about that one?

Yeah, we have heard about that. There’s a book by Sandra Clark, Newfoundland and Labrador English, and she talks about this. She’s done research on it, and she talks about her research and what others have found out about this feature.

And she says, like, much of the regionalisms and specialness of the speech of the maritime provinces and other provinces nearby, it probably comes from British and Irish and Northern Europe heritage.

But you can also hear that in the Atlantic provinces and in Ottawa Valley and in Maine.

And there’s a story in a book called From Clerks to Corpora. It’s a collection of linguistic essays.

The essay is by Peter Sankvist, but he repeats a story about how the stereotypical Mainer, that is people from Maine, also do this.

And they’re stereotyped as saying, I up. But that’s actually a rendering of the Mainer’s use of the pulmonic aggressive.

And in this story, he talks about how a medical doctor from Kentucky who was working in Maine, in down east Maine, as they call it, he asked this Mainer patient if he’s well.

And the patient does that pulmonic aggressive, and it sounds like, -oh, like that.

And the doctor hears what he thinks is a gasp for breath and becomes concerned about the patient’s health, not realizing it’s just a way of saying yes.

Yep, yep, yep. It’s pretty cool.

But the thing about this pulmonic aggressive is not only yes, it’s a discourse particle.

Discourse particles are little bits of reactive sound or speech that we drop into conversation, and they’re not full grammatical utterances.

They can have a lot of roles, but often they just show that we’re paying attention, and they can say things like yeah, no, or mm.

Like they just kind of, it’s a sound we make to say, I’m following along.

Yep, yep, yep. Yep, yep.

So that’s pretty cool.

The phrase that you want to Google if you want to find out more than you could possibly stand about it is pulmonic ingressive, P-U-L-M-O-N-I-C-I-N-G-R-E-S-S-I-V-E, pulmonic ingressive.

Yeah, it’s pulmonic like pulmonary.

Yeah. Right, right, I got that.

And a friend of mine from down home in Nova Scotia told me about a book which I’m going to pick up when I was asking him about this, and it’s called The Blue Nosers Book of Slang.

And if you don’t know about that one, that might be one for both of you to check out.

That sounds good. It’s called How to Talk Nova Scotian.

Thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate it.

Well, it’s really been fun talking with you. All right. Take care now.

Bye, David. Take care. Bye.

Call us 877-929-9673.

We heard from Paula Egan Wright in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Paula teaches music, and last week she was introducing a group of three-year-olds to a song about birds.

And she held up a little finger puppet with a long beak and asked if they knew what kind of bird that was.

And one little girl said, that’s a honey bird. I love that, instead of hummingbird.

Oh, a honey bird. That makes a lot of sense. A honey bird.

And you know how those childhood misunderstandings just get lodged in your vocabulary.

We have a lot of honey birds outside our window because we have a couple of feeders.

So that’s what I’m calling them from now on. Thank you, Paula.

And the sweet stuff that you feed them is a little like honey.

Yeah, exactly. It kind of makes sense. It makes sense.

We love the sweet things that children say. If you’ve got some to share, 877-929-9673.

That’s toll free in the United States and Canada. Or if you’re somewhere else in the world, there are lots of ways to reach us.

Go to waywordradio.org/contact.

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Oh, hi. My name is Hannah Roark. I’m calling from Shreveport, Louisiana.

Oh, we’re glad to have you, Hannah.

Well, I used to always hear this expression in my family. When someone was being mischievous and you wanted to very gently scold them, you might call them cooter brown.

And as I have noticed down through the years, in pop culture, you might say that someone was drunk as cooter brown.

And my mom and I were just wondering, you know, where that expression came from.

And, you know, since then I’ve asked people from around different parts of the South, have you ever heard anyone referred to as cooter brown? They’re like, yeah, usually when they’re drunk.

And I was like, oh, man. I just really wondered what the origin of that is and what the story is.

So she would use it when somebody was misbehaving. Like how much were they misbehaving?

It was very, very gentle scolding. Like if you were, you know, standing on your head, you know, say, okay, Cooter Brown. Quit showing off.

Yeah. So cooter, just so everyone’s clear, C-O-O-T-E-R-B-R-O-W-N, cooter brown.

That is what I would presume, yes.

Yeah, so the drunk is cooter brown. Sometimes it’s high as cooter brown or as fast as cooter brown, but a lot of times things are being compared to cooter brown.

There are a couple different stories to tell here. The first one, let’s say right off the bat, we’re not sure who cooter brown is.

Now, I’ve got some theories. We’ve talked about this on the show before, but I’ve got a little bit more than the last couple of times we’ve talked about it.

And one of those things is that there was a paper now defunct in Nashville called the Nashville Banner that in the mid-1930s started using Cooter Brown as kind of a columnist’s crutch, where he was an invented character, kind of like a Joe Sixpack, who the columnists could use to spout everyday wisdom.

You know, Cuda Brown says, you know, why don’t people do this? Or Cuda Brown thinks the political situation is that.

And it’s interesting that this was in 1934, 1935, that this happened in Nashville.

And not far away in Memphis, somebody sent a column from Memphis to a newspaper in Atlanta in 1936 using the expression deader than Cooter Brown, which is where we have this first comparison of Cooter Brown.

So both of these from Tennessee. And so these two early uses of Cooter Brown are just interesting because they’re both from Tennessee.

But I don’t know that that means anything because these kind of coincidences happen.

And there are a lot of cooter browns that you can find in old newspapers doing things like getting arrested or going to court or just being mentioned as participating in this event or that event.

And cootie browns as well. Sometimes you will actually see people talking about drunker than cootie browns, C-O-O-T-I-E.

Langston Hughes uses this expression in some of his writing a couple different times in 1944 and 1950.

But I mention all of this to say, I’m not even sure that this is the origin of it.

Because I think the more important thread when we’re trying to get to the root of Cooter Brown is an older expression, drunk as a coot, or drunk as a cooter, or drunk as a cootie, which is about 200 years old.

Wow. And this expression is probably originally American, dates back to the 1820s.

And their first expression that we know from the Dictionary of Americanisms is drunk as a cooter.

Isn’t a cooter a snapping turtle too?

Sometimes it is, especially in Florida. Yeah, I could see one of those in the drink.

But again, it’s not clear ever what people meant when they talked about a coot, a cootie, or a cooter.

Sometimes it’s just the vague other, you know, just comparing it to something that must be ridiculous or amazing or beyond the pale.

So that’s what we know, Hannah. If you want to do your own digging, I highly recommend spending a little money on a newspaper database or just going to the Library of Congress and looking at the chronicling of America digitized newspapers and seeing what you can find for yourself.

I have looked at them for this expression and for Cooter Brown and found some stuff, but maybe you’ll find something I didn’t.

Amazing. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And I’ll do that. I’ll follow up on it.

Yeah, our pleasure. And let us know if you find anything that we haven’t mentioned.

I sure will. Thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

If there’s a word or phrase that’s puzzled you, we’d love to talk with you about it.

Call us 877-929-9673 or send us an email about it.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Kara. I’m from Charlotte, North Carolina.

Hi, Kara. Welcome to the show.

Well, thanks. Thanks very much.

So I had a question. I had an experience that happened to me really last year.

So I’m from the South, and I went up to visit a couple of friends in Canada, Canadian friends.

I’d only been there once before briefly, you know, to visit Niagara Falls.

So anyway, went up there, and they lived in New Brunswick.

And it was late October and cold, and so they took me to a Tim Hortons, right?

I loved that.

It was great.

Went to the Tim Hortons, and they had all sorts of merchandise there.

And so I thought, oh, well, I’m going to get a hat.

So I got a coffee, and then I asked for a toboggan.

And the lady, the cashier, she looked at me and she said, what?

She was really surprised.

I said, a toboggan, a toboggan.

And I pointed to it.

And, of course, at that time, everybody laughed.

Nobody knew what I was talking about.

I finally, of course, I doubled down at that point.

I said, a toboggan, the thing you put on your head.

And they figured out what I was talking about.

And they gave me the toboggan, the beanie, the knitted hat,

And they told me that’s not what it’s called there.

But they, yeah, so that was a bit of a culture shock.

And when I left, I realized probably that’s only known as a toboggan in the south,

But that’s always what I’ve heard it called.

So I just wondered what’s up with the toboggan.

It’s called a toque there, right?

A toque.

A toque.

A toque.

In a lot of places, a toboggan is a long, flat-bottomed sled.

So the question is, which came first, toboggan the sled or toboggan the hat?

And the answer is that the word for the sled came first.

Toboggan, meaning a long, flat-bottomed wooden sled, comes from similar words for this type of sled in the Algonquian family of languages.

And speakers of Canadian French adapted this word into their own language in the late 17th century.

And eventually it found its way into English.

And by the late 1800s, English speakers were describing the kind of knitted hat that you’d wear to keep warm while you’re on a toboggan as a toboggan cap or a toboggan hat.

Meaning often it was the kind of hat that is a woolen hat that’s really long, goes down your back, comes to a point.

And eventually the cap or the hat was dropped and people just talked about wearing a toboggan on their head.

And here we are with Kara on the phone.

You do hear toboggan used for a knitted hat in the South, in the South Midlands, through Kentucky and Tennessee and Arkansas and Louisiana and Oklahoma.

But it also appears in a strip across the inland north from New York State to all the way out to the coast of Washington State.

And sometimes in the South, it’s just called a boggan, B-O-G-G-A-N or B-O-G-G-I-N.

Yeah, I think I’ve heard that too. That’s right.

I’m sure that wouldn’t have made things any clearer, though, if I had actually said that when I went in.

That probably would have been worse.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, that clears it up.

Well, there’s another little bit here that we might add to why the hat took the name.

It might not just be because you wore the cold weather hat while you were on the toboggan.

Some of the toboggans have a curved front that kind of curves up.

Imagine an elf shoe curving up.

This is where you might put your hands and hold on while you’re sliding down the hill.

And some of these original hats were curved back in the back.

That long part that Martha was talking about that had the tassel or bell on the end was curved back in a similar fashion.

So they kind of had a shape that was reminiscent of that shape of the sled.

Oh, how interesting. I had no idea.

Well, we appreciate your calling.

Thanks, Carver.

Thanks so much. Take care. Bye-bye.

Those cultural counters where you go to another country and you say something and they say something and you both laugh because you realize you don’t quite understand each other.

Those are our bread and butter.

877-929-9673 is a toll-free number in Canada and the United States.

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Of course, 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.

E.B. White is well known for children’s books like Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little, as well as lots of essays, but he was also a prolific letter writer.

And there’s one from the book Letters of Note, which was compiled by Sean Usher, that I really like and wanted to share.

It’s a response to a Mr. Nadeau who wrote E.B. White in 1973.

And Mr. Nadeau, whoever he was, was feeling especially pessimistic about the future of the human race.

And here’s White’s response to that.

Dear Mr. Nadeau,

As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman,

The contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate.

Hope is the thing that is left to us in a bad time.

I shall get up Sunday morning and wind the clock as a contribution to order and steadfastness.

Sailors have an expression about the weather.

They say, the weather is a great bluffer.

I guess the same is true of our human society.

Things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed, sometimes rather suddenly.

It is quite obvious that the human race has made a queer mess of life on this planet.

But as a people, we probably harbor seeds of goodness that have lain for a long time waiting to sprout when the conditions are right.

Man’s curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble.

We can only hope that the same traits will enable him to claw his way out.

Hang on to your hat, hang on to your hope, and wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.

Sincerely, E.B. White.

And Grant, I thought, despite the dated references to man doing this and man doing that,

I really appreciated this letter, just the hope that he conveyed.

Yeah, and the message is all the more reinforced by the beautiful writing.

Yeah, not a word wasted.

He always emphasized that as a writer.

And I think he didn’t waste a word here.

No, and he took care with it to craft a message instead of just saying, you know, buck up, brother.

He spent time with this to get it right.

I wonder if E.B. White needed that message as much for himself as he did for his correspondent.

I wonder, because we all have those moments where we feel like, oh, it’s all going to heck in a handbasket.

Yeah.

And there was something I thought really wonderful about how he talks about winding the clock.

You know, we don’t do that anymore, but it’s that same idea of just going through the motions.

Sometimes you just have to put one foot in front of the other and do those quotidian things.

And as he says, you know, the clouds finally part.

Right.

But it’s not just the quotidian things, but the quotidian things that prepare for the coming day

With the expectation that it will appear.

Yeah, that’s a really good point.

We’ll share that book, Letters of Note, by Sean Usher on the website.

And if you’ve got something beautiful that you’ve read,

A paragraph, a sentence, an idiom, a proverb,

We would love to see it so we can share it with others too.

words@waywordradio.org.

Or call us on the phone.

It’s toll-free in the United States and Canada, 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi there.

My name is Nathan. I’m calling from Omaha, Nebraska.

I was just calling about Bags Not, and it comes from the show Bluey.

All right, set this up for us. You’ve got to tell us a little bit more about this.

Yeah, tell us about Bluey.

There’s a kid’s show, and I believe it’s Australian, and it’s called Bluey.

And my wife and I started watching it, and then we had our first child.

She’s now a year and a half old.

And she walks up and she goes, bluey, bluey, bluey.

And the new season came out and there was an episode where they said,

And it obviously meant, like, not it.

Like, I don’t want to do it.

And so I looked at my wife a few minutes later and I checked our daughter’s diaper and I kind of looked up at my wife and I said, Bagnot.

And yeah.

And so that’s been kind of an ongoing joke of like, Bagnot, I don’t want to do it.

But I started trying to research the history, and, you know, I can’t find anything on Bags Knot.

I don’t know.

Oh, my friend, we’re going to enlighten you.

Bags Knot is, it is Australian, but originally it was British, and it comes from the UK.

And there are so many ways to stake a claim like that in English, because that’s what this is a version of.

The wonderful folklorists, Iona and Peter Opie, called this sort of thing a part of the children’s code of oral legislation, which I think is a perfect description.

Because so much of childhood is about negotiating your rights with other children, isn’t it?

Yes.

The code of oral legislation.

So it’s about what’s yours, what’s mine, what we are arguing about, who has rights, who doesn’t have rights.

And so this particular notion of bagging something goes back to bagging a trophy or bagging a deer when you’re hunting.

So at one point, this bag was literally about adding something to your bag, carrying away your haul in the bag or your score or your catch for the day.

And then it was borrowed with the notion of I’m bagging that, meaning I’m taking that.

And it’s shortened as children will do or anybody will do.

So I bag that or I bags that.

And the forms can be, you might just say bags or bagsy or bagsy or I bags or baggy mine or the negative, which you’re using, bags not.

Which means I don’t want that or I refuse that or I’m not taking my turn or I reject that.

Okay.

Yeah.

I’m not going to change that diaper.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I’m not going to change that diaper.

I don’t want my turn.

Sometimes it’s not about taking a physical thing.

It’s about taking an opportunity.

Like, bagsy, which means I get to take the next turn on the swing or the slide or what have you.

Okay.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Nathan, the next time there’s a full diaper, you might mix it up and say bags instead of bags.

Yeah, yeah.

Give your wife a break, dude.

For sure.

For sure.

Always.

Well, thank you.

All right.

Take care.

Thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Grant, you recently introduced me to the term lapse lock, which I didn’t know.

Right. That’s the opposite of caps lock.

It’s when someone types in all lowercase letters, even when they shouldn’t.

Like no initial caps on sentences, no capitalizing proper nouns.

Right. And our conversation prompted this poem, written in all lowercase letters, sent to us by Ted Duffield in Berkeley, California.

Lapslock lived in a lowercase town with not so many capitals found.

Summer, spring, autumn, winter, he skipped his shifting and held his ground.

And Grant, I just love that all the E.E. Cummings fans out there are thinking of the E.E. Cummings poem that starts out,

Anyone lived in a pretty how town with up so floating many bells down, spring, summer, autumn, winter.

He sang his didn’t, he danced his did.

I just love that poem.

So I was thrilled when Ted sent one about how sloth.

Yeah, it’s a tribute, right?

It’s a callback.

I love it.

Yeah.

What’s really funny is I’ve always read that poem really fast.

Anyone lived in a pretty how town.

But you listen to E.E. Cummings read it.

We can link to that on our website.

He does it really slowly.

I was really surprised.

Oh, yeah, you’ve got kind of a jazz patter going when you do it.

Like I can hear the bass line going doo-doo-doo-doo-doo in the background.

We appreciate your creative efforts.

You know, people send us books they’ve written, chapters of fanfics.

They send us photos of their art.

They send us pictures of the things they’ve made for their cats.

And, of course, you can send your poems.

words@waywordradio.org.

Hello.

You have A Way with Words.

Hi.

This is Leith.

Originally from Alaska, calling from Spokane.

Welcome to the show, Lise. What can we do for you?

I’ve never seen this word in print, but I grew up with it.

Us kids were taught this from a very young age, and it was the kushtaka.

And it was a creature that’s part otter and you can shapeshift.

And we were told this to not veer out of our little village or camp at night or to the ocean.

Otherwise, we would get lured in by the Kushtaka, and that was something to be very feared.

But I don’t know how to spell it, and I haven’t seen it in print.

It was just an oral story told down to us, but boy, it put the fear of God in us.

Can you say the word again for everyone?

Kushtaka.

Kushtaka.

So are you part of any native group?

Not in Alaska, no.

Just born and raised.

Okay.

It was just told to us from a young age to help us stay put.

Before I answer your question, I want to say that I’m not part of the native cultures I’m going to talk about.

It’s not part of my lived experience, but I have done some reading on the cultures I’m going to talk about.

But that said, I’m going to refer you to some books that I think will help you.

And they are from people who are from those cultures.

But from what I understand, the Kushtaka comes from the Haida and Tlingit cultures and beliefs.

And it is a being which takes a lot of different forms.

It’s presented to outsiders and tourists as one thing.

It tends to often just show up in books of cryptids and ghost stories as one thing.

You might find it in television and movies with these particular characteristics that are very unlike.

You’ll find it in the stories and the histories of the Tlingit and the Haida.

But when you read or listen to the people of those native groups tell their stories, it’s something else altogether.

Actually, you’ll find Kushtaka in a couple place names in Alaska.

For example, there’s a Kushtaka Lake not far from Katala on the coast.

And above it, Kushtaka Ridge and Kushtaka Mountain.

And of course, Kushtaka Glacier, or what’s left of it, is not far from that.

And it’s defined in the U.S. Geological Survey maps or records as demon or ghost as far back as 1903.

But that’s, again, that’s an outsider’s definition of the word.

It depends, yes.

Yeah, but it’s an oversimplification.

So a lot of the stories have to do with drowned people being taken by the land otters and becoming something else where their souls are taken by the land otters.

Or people who died in the woods, their souls would migrate into the land otters and that the land otters then could understand human speech or even speak.

The land otters were invested with this great shaman or still maybe invested with this great shamanistic power.

And have this ability to do things with or to people,

Sometimes helpful, sometimes wicked, sometimes dangerous.

It’s incredibly complicated.

And I can recommend a couple books that you can read more about

From people who are part of those Native groups, if you want.

But really a lot of boils down to the landowners

And all this great power that they were and are said to have.

Such power sometimes that even their pelt and their meat was not used.

Unlike all the other native animals and local animals which were used for survival and for day-to-day living.

Book for Books, edited by or written by Sergi Kan, that’s S-E-R-G-E-I-K-A-N.

He’s got one called The Tlingit and Their Coastal Neighbors.

Tlingit is T-L-I-N-G-I-T.

And another one called The Tlingit Potlatch of the 19th Century.

And both of those books talk at length about the cultures in general,

But also each of them mentions the kushtaka and the beliefs surrounding them.

That’s wonderful.

Thank you so much for that background and how I can now kind of dig deeper.

I really appreciate it.

Yeah, our pleasure.

Call again sometime.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Chris from Hollywood, Florida.

Hi, Chris.

Welcome.

Hi, Chris.

What can we do for you?

I went to Europe for the first time in 2021, November, went to Spain.

On my way back, I stopped in London.

I had a pint with a friend.

He suggests we go see another friend.

And as we’re riding around in the city that night, they’re showing me around.

They use this word Faf.

F-A-F-F.

And I’ve loved the word ever since.

I’ve looked it up a few times and kind of have gotten some context and some history,

But I feel like I still have no idea what I’m talking about.

Still use it all the time, but, you know, would love some more.

Faffing, F-A-F-F, Frank Adam Frank Frank.

-huh.

And how would you hear it used?

Yeah, what did you take it to mean?

When he used it, it kind of felt like a bit of maybe procrastination, dilly-dallying in a sense, or wasting time.

Perfect.

So that’s kind of how he used it.

That’s it.

Exactly right.

That’s what faffing or faffing about is exactly what it is.

It’s dawdling, wasting time, dithering, having no purpose or point or even acting ineffectually.

Okay, cool.

It rose to prominence in British English during the 1980s with shows like Coronation Street, which is kind of a soap opera.

But ultimately, it comes from a pair of English dialect words in places like Yorkshire.

And faff could be used to describe wind or plants blowing in the wind.

A faffing wind was a gusty wind or faffing wheat was swaying wheat or you faff the chaff of grain in your hands.

And before long, you can see in the written record that faff came into figurative use to include, I guess, your breath.

Kind of wasting your breath or wasting your time or energy or making a fuss or gossip.

Just little gusts of energy or breath that seem to have no point or purpose.

Yeah, doing something insubstantial.

Yeah, something insubstantial.

And I love the form faffmet, F-A-F-F-M-E-N-T, which means nonsense or balderdash.

A load of faffmet.

Enough with this faffmet.

But there’s another word faffle too, which is possibly related.

Faffle is a verb which originally meant to stutter but came to mean to work in a slow, delaying, or obstructing way or to saunter or to fumble.

And that possibly has some reinforcing effect on to faft.

And it also spawned a word fafflement, meaning trifling or unnecessary work.

So I guess you could, if there’s something you do not want to do and want no part of, you could call it faffment and fafflement.

Wow.

That would be a great name for a law firm.

Fafminton.

Fafminton.

Well, Chris, we’re delighted that you would call and faff about with us for a bit.

It’s my pleasure and honor to learn about it with you guys.

I’ve come to find that sometimes it will be faff.

Yeah, life is full of fafflement.

Fafflement and bafflement.

Thanks for calling, Chris. Take care.

It’s my pleasure, guys. Have a great one.

All right. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

If you want to faff about with us, give us a call, 877-929-9673.

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We’d love to hear from you, no matter where you are in the world.

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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.

Special thanks to Michael Breslauer, Josh Eckels, Clare Grotting, Bruce Rogow, Rick Seidenwurm, and Betty Willis.

Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett. Until next time, goodbye.

Bye. you