That Old-Book Smell (episode #1375)

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.

The smell of old books. You walk into a used bookstore, you pull down a volume at the library. You know this smell, right, Grant? It hits you. You know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s one smell.

Yeah. How would you describe it?

Oh, childhood, libraries, memory, pleasure, all those things. It all comes from that smell. Did you know that researchers in London have analyzed that smell? And they’ve come up with a description of it? They describe it as a combination of grassy notes with a tang of acids and a hint of vanilla over an underlying mustiness.

Oh, really?

Yeah. I thought maybe it was insect poo. I didn’t want to find out more, really. That sort of sounds like a fine wine, right?

Yeah. Well, and they explained that the smell is actually the result of volatile organic compounds that are released into the air from the paper when you open up a book. And the reason that you get that vanilla in part is because of the compound lingen, which is present in the cell walls of plants. And you find it in all wood-based paper. And so the chemical structure of lingen turns out to be very, very close to vanilla. So that’s why you get those vanilla notes.

So my books are off-gassing, you’re telling me.

Exactly. I didn’t know that word until I started reading this story.

How do you know off-gassing?

I learned it because that’s what happens in a car. When the interior of a car has a particular smell, it off-gasses.

Really?

Plastics off gas.

Yeah, they use that term in the article about books, off-gassing. So I go into a library and I’m smelling chemistry at work. I’m smelling plant life decomposing.

You’re smelling plants, yes.

The books are slowly decomposing on the shelves then.

Yes, yes. And they use that technology. Now they’re developing this technology to work with books so that they don’t have to cut books when they’re doing analysis of them. And they can actually tell how old a book is by the waft.

Oh, that’s beautiful.

So you don’t have to destroy these ancient texts.

Yes, exactly. Tell us what that smell makes you think of. When you go to a library and you have that particular sensation, where does it take you? Does it take you to a library that you love? Does it take you to a book that you remember? A librarian who was a good friend and always recommended just the right thing. And smell like books.

Yeah.

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Email words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Claire, and I’m calling from Dallas, Texas.

Hi, Claire. Welcome to the show.

Hi, Claire.

Hi, I’m glad to be on.

Glad to have you. What can we help with?

Well, so I was curious about a phrase that my grandfather says, and he says he learned it from a friend when he was a senior in high school who came from Beaumont, and the phrase goes like this. That’s a dingbat off of a whiff-em-dilly that you grind the smoke with. A dingbat off of a woof—dilly that you grind the smoke with. And he says this in response to what?

So if you’re asking, hey, what are you eating? And he maybe doesn’t want to share or tell you, he would say, well, that’s a dingbat off of a woof—dilly that you grind the smoke with. Or if you pick up a tool and you’re not sure what it does, and he wants to give you a silly response, that’s what he says.

All right, then.

Yeah. That is great. And then how do you respond?

She puts salt in this coffee.

I don’t know. What do you say to a man like that?

Well, I kind of just give an inquisitive look like, huh? But my brother, who is six years younger than me, picked up on it. And he says it all the time now, mainly to annoy my youngest sister, who is 12. So, I don’t know. I just kind of blank stare or ask my question again. But he gets a real kick out of saying that to us.

Oh, gosh.

That’s terrific. I’ve never heard that version. Have you, Grant?

No, no, that’s a new one to me.

Yeah. Yeah, it’s part of that great tradition, I suppose, of things that parents say to kids when kids ask too many inquisitive questions about, what you doing, Daddy?

Yeah. What you making?

Yeah. And it does. It does catch you up short, right, and make you stop and think. I’ve seen other versions of this that all have to do with that notion of grinding smoke, which is pretty ridiculous, right?

Yeah. I’ve seen versions like that’s a hooey dink for grinding smoke or a Ouija for grinding smoke or a wigwam for a water windmill for grinding smoke. Well, we did a call a couple of years ago where somebody asked about the expression layers for meddlers and crutches for lame ducks. And it’s the same sort of thing. It’s like, what are you making, mama? Layers for meddlers and crutches for lame ducks. And there’s like 15 or 20 versions of that, too.

Yeah. Funny.

Yeah. And they’re all kind of a way of saying, go away. A whim-wham for a goose’s bridle is another one, right?

Yes. Do you know this one?

No.

Claire, a whim-wham for a goose’s bridle. So what you need to do is prepare yourself for the ones that Martha and I are giving you. So when your grandpa says this to you, you say, no, it looks like a whim-wham for a goose’s bridle to me.

That’s great.

That’s great.

That’s good.

Or a wiggly woggler.

There we go.

Yeah, a wiggly woggler. And what was your word, Claire?

Now I’ve forgotten it.

A dingbat off of a whiff-em-dilly that you grind the smoke with.

A Whiff-em-Dilly?

Whiff-em-Dilly.

Whiff-em-Dilly. Okay, we’re adding that one to the list. You know what it sounds like? It sounds like somebody reading the menu at an ice cream shop. Each pair of words sounds like a treat.

Yeah.

That’s fantastic. I’ll take a ding-back and a Whiff-em-Dilly. Two Whiff-em-Dillys, please. Hold the smoke.

That’s great. Well, does that help?

That does. Thank you. I didn’t know if it was maybe regional, you know, kind of being near Louisiana. In the Beaumont area, but I guess it’s just kind of every area has their own flavor of that.

Yeah, it’s a kind of folklore. Folklore comes in a lot of different dimensions, and this is the strange folklore that is transmitted from an older generation to a younger one.

Yeah, and across the pond because Wim Wim for a Goose’s Bridal is found in England.

Oh, is that from the UK? How about that?

Oh, interesting. So there you go. But I just love this little bit of folklore that lingers. It’s not that dominant. There’s no television show named after it. It hasn’t shown up as a book title as far as I know. It just kind of lurks there.

Yeah. And then there are these oddballs like your grandfather who can’t let go. You go, Grandpa.

Well, great. Thanks for calling, Claire.

Yeah, thanks so much.

All right, bye-bye.

All right, bye-bye.

Oh, there’s got to be a lot more of these, and I want to hear them all. What do you say to your kids when they ask you a question that you don’t want to answer? Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or email words@waywordradio.org.

I read an email from Karen Walters who asks, is there a term for a word that does not fit its own definition? For example, phonetically is not spelled phonetically. And the word verb is a noun. And monosyllabic is polysyllabic. Is there a word for that?

I don’t know that there’s a word for it.

I don’t know either.

The quiz guys would know.

Yeah. Just their bailiwick.

Yeah, I’m thinking of words that do fit their definition, like sesquipedalian.

Yes, great example. It’s a really long word.

Yeah. And while we’re thinking about it, why is it that the word mnemonic is so hard to remember how to spell?

I don’t know.

I don’t know. Deep thoughts here on Public Radio. 877-929-9673 is the number to call, or send us email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Selena Letera. I’m calling from Tucson, Arizona.

Hi, Selena. Welcome to the show. What can we help you with?

Well, I have a question about a debate that I have with my boyfriend on a regular basis.

He’s from Texas and I’m from New York. It’s really a wonder we can even communicate.

But we’ve been together for nine and a half years and often I have to get out my Texan English dictionary.

But one of the things that we discuss on a regular basis is the difference in how we say something when we’re describing how to throw something out.

He says that the difference is because of where we were raised.

He was born in Dallas.

I was born in New York, in the Bronx.

And when he throws something out, he says, oh, you know, I don’t need that. Just chunk it.

And I say, oh, I don’t need that. Just chunk it.

So I say chuck is the correct way, and he says chunk.

So I wanted to get the definitive answer on this so we could finally settle this or not.

So you say chuck, C-H-U-C-K, and that means to toss or to throw.

And he says chunk, C-H-U-N-K, and that means to toss or to throw, right?

To him it does, yes.

Here’s the big news, and to millions of people in the American South. He’s right, you know.

It’s a Southernism, and he’s not alone. Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, Georgia, you name it.

In the South, they say it.

But Chuck isn’t wrong. Chuck isn’t wrong either.

You were both right.

But he’s right. It’s about where he learned it because of where he comes from.

Oh, well, that’s not really thrilling to hear.

I know who’s going to be doing the happy dance.

But here’s the thing. I think he’s going to be doing the happy dance, exactly.

And it was because it was a Southern thing, and I even said, well, Martha’s from the South. She’s going to know the answer to this.

Well, you know, you might find this chunk verb in the speech of some Southerners, but not all Southerners.

But you almost never find it in the speech of people from anywhere else in the country, the North and the West and so forth.

Yeah, I have to say, I would say Chuck.

Yeah, I would usually say Chuck, too.

But I have heard chunk.

The word goes back at least 200 years in American English.

It’s been recorded as an Americanism for a very long time, specifically called out in a variety of dictionaries as being particular to the American South for a very long time.

That’s so interesting.

It’s interesting to me that they mean the same thing because to me to chunk something is something much heavier.

Yeah, it lands with a thud.

Interesting.

Exactly.

Or, you know, cooking and chopping something up in chunks.

It just, I thought my head was going to spin the first time I heard it.

He’s going to be so thrilled to hear this.

So I would argue that you need to appreciate this southern gentleman, well, I hope he’s a gentleman, that lives in your house.

Yeah, don’t chuck him. Don’t get rid of him.

And start to find the charm in his particular way of saying things.

I’m sure you’ve got some New Yorkies in you that he wonders about, right?

Oh, I definitely, yes, I definitely do.

And with my family, he’s learned a whole new slew of words.

Nice.

I love that.

I think that’s, I love it when two cultures get together in a family, right? In the same household.

Well, it’s great.

And, you know, the thing is, is that we drive an 18-wheeler, so we’re all over the country.

Oh, yeah.

And we do hear a lot of different words and phrases in different parts of the country.

So I do appreciate all of those differences.

But when it comes right down to having a battle at your kitchen table.

Or in the cabin.

Only one of you gets to sleep in the bunk that night.

That’s right.

Well, cool.

Thank you for calling in the future.

Call us again about your stories from the road with the stuff that you’re picking up.

We’d love to hear it.

Yeah, we’d love to hear from him, too.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Best wishes to you.

Bye-bye.

Okay, bye-bye now.

Bye-bye.

We’d love to be charmed by you.

Call us with your stories and tales, your romantic interludes that always devolve into language.

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

Oh, I’ve been having a fine old time with the Reddit thread on intellectual jokes.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, man, I cannot leave this alone.

Tell me your favorite.

Is it solipsistic in here or is it just me?

Yes.

A man is on his first visit to Boston, and he wants to try out some of the delicious New England seafood that he’s heard about.

So he gets into the cab, and he says to the driver, can you take me to where I can get scrod?

And the driver replies, I’ve heard that question a thousand times, but I’ve never heard it in the Pluperfect Subjunctive.

Hot chat for nerds, 877-99-9673.

It’s mental floss for word nerds as A Way with Words continues.

You’re listening to A Way with Words.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

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

Hello, John.

Hi, I’m Mr. Now.

That’s very nice.

We missed you a lot.

What do you have for us?

That’s right.

What do I have for you guys?

You know, you guys like to encourage people to talk about and explore language.

Of course, and I encourage people to talk about and explore puzzles.

One thing that I’d really like people to do is to be picky about who makes their puzzles.

People should have favorites, and many crossword fans do, which is why I like to show the work of crossword constructors that I think are brilliant.

Okay, artisanal puzzles.

Very good, yes.

I’ll give you some punny clues from three popular constructors, and I’ll give you the length of the answer and the first letter.

Okay.

For example, the first group comes from a constructor by the name of Brendan Emmett Quigley.

And you can find him on the internet, and he’s a great constructor.

Now, these are, of course, mostly some, they’re punny clues, so a lot of times they have a question mark at the end of them to indicate that they are puns.

Okay?

This is a five-letter word, and the clue is makes bread. It begins with an E.

Makes bread?

Makes bread, beginning with an E.

Earns?

Earns is right.

Very good.

Always play on one of the words, usually.

Speaking of which, the clue is last thing to do before getting one’s master’s.

Four letters, beginning with P.

Play?

Putt.

P-U-T-T.

Putt is correct.

This one actually doesn’t even require a question mark.

It is the last thing to do before you get your master’s.

Putt is right.

This one’s perfect for you guys.

Clean Air Org? Question mark.

Three letters.

NPR.

Because they have fresh air, right?

It’s not EPA.

They do have fresh air, but this is clean air.

Of course, this is an abbreviation because the word org, abbreviation, with a period is in there.

What’s the first letter?

F.

FCC.

FCC is right.

Very good, Martha.

And those were clues from Brendan Emmett Quigley.

Here are a few from a very clever constructor named Patrick Berry.

He does great crosswords as well as great cryptics.

It might hold a few swallows.

This one begins with an N.

Neck?

What do you say, an N?

Not neck.

Nest?

Nest is right.

Yes.

Very good.

How about this one?

Four letters.

Caseload, four letters, beginning with a B.

Beer?

Beer is right.

Very good.

That fits perfectly.

I’m going to write that in.

There we go.

How about something thrown for a loop?

Five letters beginning with L.

Something thrown for a loop.

Something thrown for a loop.

Lasso.

Yes, lasso.

Very good.

Nice.

Those were from Patrick Berry.

Here are some from Elizabeth Gorski.

She has, I think, more Sunday New York Times puzzles than anybody.

How about this one?

One getting hit on at a party.

Six letters.

One getting hit on at a party.

Mm—

Pinata?

Pinata is correct.

Yes.

Yes, very good.

And how about a four-letter word for sitting area?

Butt.

Rear.

You’re close.

I’m sorry.

I should have told you it begins with a T.

Oh, T.

Tush is correct.

Oh, that’s good.

Yes, very good.

Here’s another one.

Revolutionary figure, six letters.

This begins with a P.

Revolutionary figure.

Revolutionary figure.

Something that spins around.

Pirouette?

No.

Oh.

Planet.

Planet, yes.

Very good.

That is a good one.

Very good.

Yeah, I like that one a lot.

And finally, ball coverings.

Five letters.

Ball coverings.

Yeah, five letters starting with a G.

Gowns?

Gowns is correct.

Very good, Martha.

Oh, very good.

John, thanks a lot.

Thank you.

Thank you for introducing us to some of these crossword puzzle masters.

I’ve been getting into it recently and really enjoying the clever brains.

Yes, it’s my pleasure to introduce you.

I hope to introduce you in person sometime.

We’ll talk to you next week.

See you then. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

If you want to talk about any aspect of language, just give us a call at 877-929-9673.

Find us on Facebook and Twitter, and you can always email us.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Katie. I’m calling from Dallas, Texas.

Hello, Katie. Welcome to the show.

Hi, Katie. What’s up?

Thank you.

Well, I’m a school teacher.

I work for Dallas Independent School District.

And I first heard this phrase at a professional development workshop, and it is share out.

Instead of share, you would say share out.

So if you were getting your kids to work in groups and they were talking, and then when you wanted them to share with the rest of the class, you would say share out.

And it struck me because I didn’t understand why she didn’t just say share.

So I was just, you know, thought maybe this is a Dallas thing.

This is our urban thing because I grew up in a small town just outside of Dallas.

But then this summer, I attended a national conference, and there were teachers from all over the nation, and they said the same thing.

They said share out.

And they also said explain out.

So I was just thinking, this is weird.

I’ve never heard this before.

Why are they adding out to the end of it?

Is this just a teacher thing?

I just thought it was really unique.

Did you get the sense that that was any different than just sharing?

It was like more encouraging, I think.

Like you shout it out, that’s different than just a shout.

It’s like share out, be proud, don’t be timid.

I like that.

I think that is a really good analysis of what might be happening here.

We can’t know for sure.

We need a lot more evidence.

But I think the idea that the out adds in this idea of being expressive and forceful and not holding back.

I love that because we do have many compounds in English that behave that way.

To shout it out or to cry out loud.

Well, to me, it connotes a sense of everybody broke up into small groups and they all work together on a project.

And then they come back together and share out with the group.

To everybody in the room instead of just their own little pot of people.

Yeah, that’s my sense of it, and I’ve heard it in corporate situations that way, where teams will work on something, and then they’ll come share out to everybody else. Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah, and that’s kind of like where education is going towards. It’s supposed to be more collaborative. You’re supposed to really think aloud your ideas, as opposed to the teacher just lecturing. It’s more of like this community feel.

But I have not heard it any other place than besides the teaching profession.

So that’s neat that you have heard it somewhere else.

Well, yeah, I have.

But I’m really curious about explain out.

That seems strange.

Devon seems more uncomfortable to me, awkward to the ear and the mouth, both.

Yeah, I think she just was maybe getting really comfortable with share out.

And I need to apply that because, you know, maybe next is going to be think out.

That’s right.

I don’t know.

I don’t know.

I have to say, though, I think what we’ve got here, if I can go to the meta-narrative level on this, I think what we’ve got here is a really good example of nascent jargon being formed within a small group of professionals who are all on the same mission.

And it remains to be seen whether or not this will leave that group of education professionals and enter into the full world.

I know Martha’s heard it in corporate environments, but will regular everyday people be saying this in the house?

I wonder.

I mean, you share out profits, too.

A company shares out profits.

It’s a bit of jargon, and I would caution everyone whose first impulse is to say, oh, it’s repugnant, why not just say explain and share, just to hold off a bit, a couple years, maybe 10 years, and just see what happens to explain out and share out and see if maybe they get their own life and their own meaning, as we’re trying to explain here, that are different than explain and share.

That’s what will probably happen.

Okay.

Yeah.

I will maybe use it this upcoming fall.

I’ve got to say two things to you, Katie.

Well, yeah, keep your ears open.

Yeah, one, congratulations on keeping your ears open.

You’re a great linguistic field worker, I would say.

And second, good luck with teaching.

You’re doing the hard work, and we appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate your help.

All right, take care now.

Bye, Katie.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, we’d love to hear your experiences with these words or other bits of corporate jargon.

Call us 877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Peter.

Hi, Peter. Where are you calling from?

I’m calling from Vermont.

Welcome to the show. How can we help?

Well, I just wanted to tell you about my experience with a word called awesome.

I was born in 1944, and back then the word awesome actually brought on a feeling of awe, such as taking a look down into the Grand Canyon.

But I noticed that that word has morphed to the point that if you go to a ball game, someone says, hey, the mustard on my hot dog was awesome.

And I kind of think that that word is being sort of cheated or watered down.

And I talked to my mother-in-law, who was born in 1920, and she agrees.

She says that word, back when she remembered it, had to do with a physical thing that happened, like conquering Mount Everest.

And it was a physical thing that then went into your body and had an effect on your soul.

So I just thought I’d tell you a little bit about my thinking about a word that has been watered down.

Maybe it was really good mustard.

Maybe that man went and changed his life, went to an ashram or something.

That’s right. Maybe it was Grand Canyon worthy.

But you’re right.

There’s what’s called semantic weakening happening here with the word awesome.

It went from being a very powerful, heightened word to being something kind of mediocre and bland.

It’s true.

That’s one of the ways that the language changes.

We do it all together as a group.

There’s not much way that any one person or even a tiny group of people can stop that from happening, I’m afraid.

Peter, I’m wondering about how that makes you feel.

Are you irritated by it?

Are you just noting it?

Well, I can give you sort of an off-color use.

The other day I heard somebody who was late meeting his wife, and he said, oh, the baby had an awesome diaper.

I have to say, it really is somewhat of a negative twist on that word, and I was irritated.

So I’m answering your question, yes.

I think the use of the word now is, it’s just been, it’s very irritating to my hearing, and also to Betty, my mother-in-law.

She says it’s irritating the way it’s used, and so the answer is yes.

So for you, the word is skunked.

That’s what we call a word where if you use it, you risk being misunderstood or misinterpreted.

So what do you use instead?

Well, I just use tremendous and great.

I actually don’t use the word awesome anymore because it doesn’t have much meaning to me in my generation.

And that’s so often what happens.

We’ve got words that are faddish.

They become hugely popular.

They’re the current thing to say.

People use them.

They’re all over the place.

And then everyone starts to collectively realize that they’re saying it too much and hearing it too much, and they stop using it, and we move on to something else.

Yeah, they realize that they’re using it lazily.

I mean, it’s almost like cuss words, you know?

Yeah, yeah.

Where you just revert to that, you just default to that, and don’t really think about exactly what it is about the mustard that you really liked.

Far out, man. Far out’s gone.

The word no longer inspires awe, which I guess is the root base of the word.

Yes.

Tremendous, though.

Chicago Fire. I’m sure that was an awesome event.

Right. Anyway, thanks for hearing my thoughts.

Yeah, sure. Thanks for calling, Peter. Really appreciate it.

All right. Bye-bye. Take care. Bye-bye.

Take care. Bye-bye.

877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org.

Find us on Twitter with the handle WayWord on SoundCloud, iTunes, Stitcher, and Facebook.

Grant, you know how much I love coffee.

I’m going to borrow a word from Jennifer Bragg who wrote us.

She said, in our home, we call a cup of extra strong coffee Confesso.

One cup and you can’t stop talking.

That sounds like a public radio host I know and love.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi, who’s this?

My name is Veronica, and I’m calling from Indianapolis, Indiana.

Hello, Veronica. How are you doing?

So I feel like I should give you guys some background story about how I even got to thinking about this word.

Okay.

Me and a friend were reminiscing about the great state of Florida, which was originally where I was born.

And my dad and my stepmom and a bunch of my other family members still live down there.

So even when we were moving around a lot when we were growing up, we used to go and visit them all the time.

And so we started thinking about, you know, and recalling all of those just little things that are special and different about Florida.

Like all the houses have clay tile roofs instead of shingles and they’re, you know, stucco and everybody has tile in their houses instead of carpet.

You know, you don’t really see carpet a lot.

No, you don’t want carpet in a Florida house.

Right, yeah.

And so one of the things that I was thinking about is how every house I’ve ever seen in Florida has a screened-in porch.

Usually it has, you know, some kind of concrete floor.

It’s usually located at the back of the house, and it’s all completely screened in.

And this is pretty much without fail, like universal or uniform across the state.

Everybody’s got one.

And the word that I used to refer to it in this conversation was lanai.

Because that is the word that I had always heard it.

You know, go get your brother off the lanai, or do you want to go sit on the lanai and have a drink?

When I said this word, everybody kind of just looked at me like, huh?

What does that mean? What is that word?

And so it kind of got me thinking about it, like, is that a regional word?

Where did it come from? Is it specific to Florida or the South in general?

You know, what’s really interesting about this term is that it’s much more common in Hawaii.

That’s where it’s from. It’s from the Hawaiian language.

Yeah, it’s a Hawaiian word.

Yeah, it’s been in English for like at least 300 years.

Yeah.

So it’s interesting that it connotes Florida for you.

But I suspect that that has to do with developers in Florida

Or real estate agents applying that fancy name

To what was a pretty mundane area of our house anyway.

Yeah, that makes sense to try and make it sound more like exotic and appealing.

Yeah, yeah, like you’re going to be draped with Lays

And people are going to be handing you a drink

With a little paper umbrella in it or something.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, we could talk all day about the difference between a porch and a lanai, but a porch, to me, is not always enclosed and is usually raised up off the ground.

Yes, yes.

Yeah.

And the one that I usually hear for that is breezeway.

I’ll hear the word breezeway here in Indianapolis a lot, but I’ve never heard anybody around here say lanai.

Well, breezeway, where I grew up in Missouri, wasn’t anything like a porch, really.

It was actually a passageway between two buildings, usually covered over with a roof and not enclosed.

Yeah, that’s my sense of it.

You’re saying that a breezeway in Indiana is a patio, an outdoor patio?

Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard it called a lot.

Like if there’s an enclosed porch, you know how, I mean, sometimes it can even be almost like a second, another room to your house.

You know, they get them all closed in.

It could even have like a ceiling fan in there or something, but it’s a nice like closed in room in the house.

And they’ll call that a breezeway.

Oh, interesting.

I’ve never heard that.

But I was wrong, actually.

Lanai has been in English for 200 years, not 300 years.

But it first shows up in some journals from some early visitors to Hawaii in the late 1700s, early 1800s.

And it has met various things, including a shack or a bower or just a tiny little hut or enclosure.

And eventually became kind of more specific as it came into English to refer to a screened-in porch specifically.

I mean, almost always.

I could be wrong.

I’m going to get a lot of people going, well, I have a lanai that’s this that’s not screened in.

Yeah, I don’t think it has to be.

No, yeah.

And we’re spelling it L-A-N-A-I, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So cool.

I would love to get to the bottom of why that Hawaiian word ended up in Florida.

Maybe Martha’s theory is right.

Homebuilders loved it for its exotic flavor.

Yeah, developers.

And took it.

So when you’re selling a house and you say it has a lanai, that feels fancy.

Yeah, I mean, terms like great room.

Yeah.

Great room?

Exactly.

Well, you know, and a lot of it has been influenced, you know, by the Spanish culture down there.

So I wasn’t sure.

That’s really interesting that it actually comes from Hawaii.

I would have just assumed that it was, you know, like some sort of Spanish word that they had adopted.

You know, just like a bunch of other stuff that they have down there.

All right.

Well, thanks for calling.

Really appreciate, Veronica, sharing your story with us.

All right.

All right.

Thank you for having me.

Okay.

Take care, Veronica.

Bye-bye.

Thanks.

You too.

Grant, I had one of those forehead-smacking moments the other day.

You know, when you see a phrase as if it’s for the first time and you think, where in the heck did that come from?

And the phrase is, in the offing.

Some event is in the offing.

Yeah, it’s about to happen.

Yeah, it is a nautical term.

The offing is the part of the deep sea that you can see from the shore.

So something that’s in the offing is right out there.

It’s just about.

It’s just about to come in.

Yeah, you can see it.

Yeah, yeah.

Very good.

How cool is that?

That’s good.

Yeah, I love it.

You’re not smacking your forehead.

No.

Only when I drive.

877-929-9673.

More of your questions and stories about language right here on A Way with Words.

Stick around.

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.

Remember last year when European researchers announced that they discovered the Higgs boson?

Huge scientific discovery.

The basic building block of the universe.

People called it the God particle.

Well, for many people, there was something even more shocking than this discovery.

And that was the fact that scientists announced this momentous discovery in a PowerPoint presentation,

The text of which was written in the font Comic Sans.

Not PowerPoint.

Not Comic Sans.

Comic Sans.

And the blogosphere, or at least parts of the blogosphere, went nuts.

Well, my part did.

Yeah, your part did.

My part did because for many people, Comic Sans is the font you love to hate.

Comic Sans.

Oh, Comic Sans.

Yeah.

Why do so many people hate it, Grant?

I mean, are you a hater?

Are you a…

Yeah.

Definitely.

That and Zaf Chancery.

You use those, I automatically discount anything you put in print.

Right.

Right.

I think it’s trying too hard or something.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You’re like, oh, I’m not clever enough to be funny, so I’ll just use a funny font.

Hey, this looks like it’s written with a felt-tip pen.

Well, there’s a funny but enlightening article about this online.

By graphic designer David Kadavy, and he rants about Comic Sans.

He calls it the font of bake sales and birthday party invitations for three-year-olds.

But Grant, one big insight that I got from his article was the fact that Comic Sans was

Invented back before our computers were equipped with what’s called anti-aliasing.

Do you know this?

Yes, I know what anti-aliasing is, right?

So instead of having a jaggy edge, you use the colors that are in the composite parts of the screen to make them a little lighter and darker so to the eye it looks like there’s smoothing happening there.

You knew that already.

I come from an IT background.

Oh, yeah, that’s right.

I worked with art departments all over the place.

Yeah, yeah.

We cared about that stuff.

Yeah, yeah.

Back then, before this technology that made fonts look smooth on screens, they looked sort of like little stacks of Legos, right?

Yeah, it was either black or white and there wasn’t much variability there.

Yeah, and the truth is if you look at a computer that doesn’t have that technology, then Comic Sans actually looks better than other fonts.

Oh, how about that?

So it was a font before its time.

So that makes me cut it a little bit more slack.

Maybe.

Maybe it’s time to retire it.

Yeah.

And if you have strong feelings about Comic Sans, you’ll really love this site called BanComicSans.com.

Oh, no.

It’s great.

It’s a beautiful site.

It’s a tongue-in-cheek blog that’s devoted to putting the Sans in Comic Sans.

And it has a little manifesto that starts, we believe in the sanctity of typography.

That’s one of those things.

It’s just like language peeves.

You’ll never abolish Comic Sans.

It’s here to stay.

Maybe not.

I mean, they’re probably…

Well, you know, actually, we were talking about this on our Facebook page.

And there were some people who said, well, wait a minute, wait.

I love that font.

Yeah, yeah.

But it does…

The no-accounting-for-taste.

Yeah, it’s sort of like angel perfume.

But really, let’s get back to the heart of what you said there.

This is not the font to use to announce a world-shattering discovery.

This is not the one.

Exactly.

Imagine the newspaper.

Millions, visit us.

We are not alone.

And it’s in Comic Sans.

You just know.

Use a strong serif typeface, right?

Yeah.

With good verticals.

Right.

Yes.

Baskerville or Times New Roman.

But yeah, font nerd me.

I used to be able to spec the entire Adobe font library on site.

That’s how good I was.

Spec it?

What does that mean?

That’s all the fonts in the Adobe library.

I could look at it on a page and tell you what face it was, what part of the family, what the size was.

Maybe help you with the kerning and the letting.

Just by looking at it without tools.

Can’t do that anymore, though.

It’s Hot Chat for Nerds right here.

You can call us, 877-929-9673, or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.

And you can find us on that Facebook page and Twitter.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Mary Beth Wood.

Hi, Mary Beth.

Where are you calling from?

Sandy Hook, Virginia.

Sandy Hook, Virginia.

Where is that?

That is between Richmond and Charlottesville.

Okay. All right.

So what’s on your mind?

We have a country convenience store that we’ve had since 1982.

And when I first bought the store, the gentleman that we bought it from, his wife, I’m sorry, his sister, worked for us.

And she was helping train me, if you will.

And her name was Mary Bell.

And a gentleman came in and he asked me for a can of Creases.

And I asked him again what he said, and he said, again, I need some Creases.

And I couldn’t figure out what on earth he was talking about, and she was kind enough to whisper in my ear, he means Crest Salad.

And so I went over to the shelf and got a can of Crest Salad off.

And sure enough, when I looked at the label, underneath Crest Salad on the label, it said Creases, and I just wondered where on earth that originally came from.

Interesting.

It said on the label?

On the label, in parentheses, it said Creases.

Okay, I have to ask, what kind of salad comes in a can?

Well, it was cress salad, watercress.

Okay.

Cress salad.

You can buy, you know, they call them salad greens in the South.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

You know, turnip greens and collard greens and whatnot.

Right.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

So it’s mixed with maybe a little bit of salt or vinegar or something?

Yeah, probably so.

But mostly canned in water.

Okay.

And you season them.

Okay.

Creases.

Creases, yeah.

We’ve got a long history of mispronouncing the word creas in the United States.

Maybe not mispronouncing it, but at least having dialect variants as creases or creases or creases or a variety of different things.

Dictionary of American Regional English, our go-to source for this sort of thing, has a great entry on this.

They’ve taken it back as far as the 1930s.

And they suggest that it’s generally in the South Midlands, which means, let’s say, just south of the Ohio River Valley, but north of the true American South.

That’s the kind of region where you’re more likely to hear creases.

And it’s not just cresses.

Generally, it is a cress, like a watercress.

But sometimes it’s just generically used for any kind of greens that you might get off a plant, including collard greens or the tops of this and that, or maybe even poke for that matter.

So sometimes when people ask for creases, some questions are needed to know exactly what they mean.

But generally we’re talking about stuff that’s served hot, right?

Not like a cold salad?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Cooked.

Cooked, right.

It cooked with maybe a little bit of vacant fat in there and salt and pepper, might throw in some onions or what have you, right?

Oh, exactly.

Okay, good, good.

Yeah, but so it’s a good long history.

The Dictionary of American Regional English spells it C-R-E-E-C-E, C-R-E-E-C-E, but you’ll find it spelled like crease, like a crease in your jeans, and creasy, C-R-E-A-S-Y, and a variety of other spellings.

Yeah, so it has nothing to do with looking like creases?

Or dogglies? No, it’s just the dialect pronunciation of crest as in watercress.

Now that’s the crest that I know best.

My grandmother lived in southeast Missouri for a time near a place that had a natural spring and we would go down there and collect the watercress and that would be a part of our dinner.

It was fantastic.

So how’s that, Mary Beth?

Interesting. Thank you very much.

You’re welcome. Thanks for calling.

Take care, Mary Beth. I appreciate it.

Bye-bye. Okay, bye-bye. Bye-bye.

I love those expressions.

They all remind me, everything that she talked about reminded me of my grandmother.

Yeah?

Yeah.

Your grandmother would use that.

They’re picking greens, going down for the watercress, just the country expressions, a particular way of talking.

There’s so much wrapped up in a single word, right?

So many connotations.

It’s like a smell or something.

Yep.

877-929-9673 or send us an email.

That address is words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Oh, yes.

This is Martha.

Yes.

Who’s this?

Hi, Martha.

This is George.

George.

Welcome to the show.

Hi, George.

How are you doing?

Oh, good.

Thank you very much.

How are you doing?

Very well.

Good.

It’s good to have you on here.

Where are you calling from?

I’m calling from Kirkland, Quebec.

It’s a town close to Montreal.

Okay.

Great.

How can we help you?

Yes, I have two questions.

It’s about it.

When you say, for example, it is a baby or it is a girl, why we use it?

Because it is for animals or things.

And we are using this with the baby.

It’s a boy, it’s a girl.

Right, right.

And the other question is, when you say it’s raining, why is it?

It means the cloud, the air, the weather.

So we’ve got a couple of interesting questions here, George.

The first one, the main reason that somebody would use it might be because they’re unclear about the gender of the thing that they’re talking about.

So if you say it’s a baby, maybe you don’t know that it’s a boy or a girl baby.

But the thing is…

It’s a human being.

Right.

So we don’t have a good pronoun to use if you don’t know the gender.

Most people will probably avoid saying he or she if they don’t know it.

Well, what about, you know, when a baby is born and you see all these cards and balloons and things and they all say, it’s a boy.

Right.

I think that’s your question, right?

Yeah, it’s a boy.

But yeah, that’s why.

Why do you use it?

We have this thing in English that’s not widely taught.

It’s called the dummy it, D-U-M-M-Y-I-T.

And the dummy it is kind of a placeholder.

In English, we require that a sentence have a subject.

But sometimes we have these circumstances where the subject is not clear or the subject is also the object or just we’re kind of making a general statement where the subject doesn’t matter.

So we say things like, it’s a boy, meaning the occasion tells me that it is a boy.

We use it just to respect the laws of grammar.

Yes, exactly.

It’s raining is another great example of that.

Or it’s a long way to Tipperary.

We don’t really have to have the it’s there.

It’s hot.

Except the grammar requires it.

The syntax of English requires it.

And so we drop it in there.

And there are thousands of ways to do this in English,

To use it in this way where it’s not clear why it is in there, but we do it.

Most English speakers don’t study this in school,

So it’s kind of a surprise to them to hear the term weather it or dummy it,

Which is kind of the colloquial linguistics way to refer to these.

Now it’s clear for me.

It’s mainly to respect the law of the construction of sentences.

There we go.

Exactly right.

Yeah, you nailed it.

Okay, good.

Oh, thank you very much.

I really appreciate it.

You really clarified me the question.

George, thank you so much for your call.

We really appreciate you calling.

Have a good day.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

That’s great.

Fantastic question.

And he really got right to the heart of the answer, didn’t he?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

And when you say weather it, you’re not spelling it W-H.

No.

You’re talking about actually the weather.

Yeah, rain and smell.

Yeah, it’s fog, that sort of thing.

It’s foggy out.

Well, what is the it?

Well, it’s a placeholder subject that we need in order to make the sentence sound right to us.

Yeah.

Yeah.

877-929-9673 is the number to call with your language questions.

A while back, we were talking about faulty language selection,

That problem that polyglots have when they’ve learned several languages

And then one language gets in the way of the other one.

We got a lot of response from our listeners about that.

And one really interesting one came from Phoebe Liu.

She’s Chinese.

She currently lives in Seattle.

And she said that she learned English as a second language when she was in middle school.

And then when she went to university, she majored in Japanese.

And she says that during her freshman year, when she talked to people in English and forgot the vocabulary, she would immediately go to Japanese rather than her native Chinese.

And she said that eventually she came up with this strategy that seemed to help.

She writes, I pretended to be a stereotypical Japanese anime girl when I speak Japanese,

Using soft intonations and more humble body language.

When I talk in English, I would use a firmer voice and hold up my chest like a confident American young girl.

I got to be back to myself when using Chinese.

This helped me to separate the languages efficiently during talking,

And even if I got stuck, it was still in that language and wouldn’t slip away to another.

And I’ve been wondering if this role-playing solution only works on me.

I guess if connections are made between body languages and the language,

It’ll be harder to change the language you’re speaking.

Oh, what a really good point.

Isn’t that interesting?

Yeah, I’ve heard that being effective for other people.

They feel like different characters when they’re speaking different languages.

Oh, definitely.

Definitely.

When I speak Spanish, I’m much more demonstrative.

And if you’re learning a language, that’s the advice that I give to people and have been given myself,

Which is imitate.

Imitate like the parody even, somebody that you know that already speaks the language.

Even mimic them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then you’ll find that you’ll become that other kind of person.

Interesting.

Yeah.

If you’ve got more to say about what it’s like to get confused between two languages,

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

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Grant.

This is Gail Millard from San Antonio, Texas.

Welcome to the show.

Nice to talk to you.

Hi.

Thank you.

Well, I live in Texas, but I am a fourth-generation Oklahoman, and there is a phrase that my mother has said since I was a little girl, and my brother and my dad and I have always teased her about it, and she could never really talk about where it came from, but here it is.

When we are going from one place to a destination, and that route includes a fairly circuitous route,

She would say, we had to go around Robin’s Barn to get there.

And she could never really tell us where that phrase came from, although I did ask her recently,

And she said she thinks her grandmother used to say that, that if something was hard to get to,

You would say, we had to go around Robin’s Barn to get there.

So my question is, who is Robin, and why did he build a barn in such an inconvenient location?

And what’s in it?

Yeah.

Gail, have you heard anyone else use it?

No, I haven’t.

In fact, that’s been kind of strange.

Obviously, it came from someone in her family, and I never heard anyone in our family say it either.

It’s only my mother.

Well, it’s interesting that she says around Robin’s barn, because usually the phrase is around Robin Hood’s barn.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Robin Hood as in the guy who lived out in Sherwood Forest, far, far away from everybody else.

Okay.

And you see this expression all across the U.S., across basically the northern part of the U.S.

You can look at a map of it, and it’s right across the northern half of the United States.

People say, by way of Robin Hood’s barn, or go around Robin Hood’s barn, or around Robin Hood’s barn and in the back door.

Well, I can’t really tell you where my family came from before Oklahoma.

I’ve never really done a genealogy, but because Oklahoma was settled by pioneers,

They came from somewhere.

So they may have come from the north.

But the expression can just, it can travel without having the people move.

You know, the expression can travel on its own from mouth to ear, mouth to ear, and so forth.

Yeah, sure.

So we’re not actually referring to an actual barn, are we?

Well, no, it depends on your perspective, right?

The story, Martha, tell me if I’m getting this right.

The idea is that Robin Hood would go and steal from the rich, and he would steal lots of things, animals and rich clothing and what have you, and he would store it in the forest.

Sherwood Forest was then literally his barn.

That’s the place where you keep things, right?

And so when you talk about Robin Hood’s barn, you’re talking about the forest or some patch of land in between one destination and another.

I see.

Well, and that also kind of makes some sense because I always wondered why it was really that big a deal to go around a barn.

Yeah, that’s a good point.

It’s a really big deal.

Yeah.

But if a barn is an entire forest, then that certainly explains why it would alter your destination arrival time.

In a couple places in the UK, they have actually named various features of the land Robin’s Barn or Robin Hood’s Barn.

How funny.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, I can’t wait to go back to her with the story.

This is awesome.

Yeah.

Well, there you go.

Thanks for calling, Gail.

All right.

Thanks for calling.

Okay, you bet.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

I think that’s a terrific expression for getting to someplace by a circuitous route.

By way of Robinson’s barn?

Yeah, whether it’s literally or figuratively.

Instead of by way of the DOT?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

When somebody doesn’t stop to ask for directions or you’re telling a long, shaggy dog story.

Thanks to the Department of Transportation and eight years of construction.

877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org.

Things have come to a pretty path.

That’s all for today’s broadcast, but don’t wait till next week to chat with us.

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Thanks for listening. I’m Martha Burnett.

And I’m Grant Barrett. Adios.

Ciao.

We must fall.