Cool Beans (Rebroadcast) - 7 April 2025
53:45 Share

Membership means more with American Express Business Gold. Earn four times membership rewards points in your top two eligible spending categories every month, including eligible U.S. advertising purchases and select media and U.S. purchases at restaurants, including takeout and delivery. What are you waiting for? Get the card that flexes with your spending every month. Terms and points cap apply. Learn more at AmericanExpress.com slash business dash gold. MX Business Gold Card, built for business by American Express.

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 Barnett. We asked our listeners to send us names that are anadromes. Now, an anadrome, you'll remember, is a word that when spelled backwards forms a whole new word. So, for example, maybe a little girl is named Noelle because she has an older relative named Leon.

And boy, did our listeners oblige. We heard from Debbie Trail in St. Charles, Illinois, who pointed out that Nomar Garcia-Para, who played for the Boston Red Sox in the 1990s, he was a great shortstop,

was named after his father, Ramon. So Nomar is named after Ramon. And we should point out, too, that he also has the good fortune to be married to the soccer star Mia Hamm. Whose first name backward is Aim, A-I-M. And if I remember correctly, she had great aim on the soccer pitch. She had fantastic aim. Good point, Grant.

And then we also heard from Karen Corley, who tweets at Logical Poet. And she said, my fave is the elderly Eldeen, who was named for her mother's great skill and love of sewing. That's Eldeen, E-L-D-E-E-N, Eldeen. Oh, I like that. I had an uncle bud, but his real name was Elden, E-L-D-O-N. Oh, nice. So Eldeen does sound like a real name, even though it's needle. Yeah. Needle backwards. How about that?

I love it. I mean, sometimes anadromes work really nicely as names. What name did you make? What did you put together to name a child or a pet or yourself? Tell us the story about how your name was made. 877-929-9673 or explain it all in email to words at waywardradio.org. Hi there. You have a way with words. Hi.

Hi, this is Martita calling from San Antonio, Texas. Hey, Martita, welcome. What can we do for you? The question that I have is, where did the phrase cool beans come from?

That's something that my mother used to say. I guess I grew up in the 70s, actually the 60s in Michigan. And I find myself saying it all the time. And people ask me, you know, where does that come from? What does it mean? And I really don't know what to tell them. All I know is that my mom used to say it and it...

It made me feel good hearing it. And so now I just say it to people all the time. Cool beans, B-E-A-N-S, beans? Yes, cool beans. What was happening when she said it? What was going on? So it could be like I'm telling her something that I did.

or something that I'd like to do. And she would, that would be her response, like cool beans. And I always took it like good for you or, you know, that sounds good. You know, I agree or something like that. That's the kind of the way I kind of process it. Affirmation or approval. Yes, yes. That's how I've heard it. I had an aunt who used to say that all the time. It seems like the 1980s were the cool beans decade for her.

Cool beans. Like you'd open a present at a family gathering and she'd be like, cool beans. And then I had a friend in college that was her saying, cool beans, cool beans. Barb Barrett, if you're out there, I remember. Yeah.

But it was pretty widespread in the 1980s. And the first use that I know of was a bit of graffiti that's recorded in a newspaper article from 1981 about high school students putting graffiti up about their class years.

And it's Cool Beans 81. So the class of 81 graffitied Cool Beans 81 somewhere in this town. And then you can find it in lists of teen slang in newspapers from 1982 forward. Now, if you Google Cool Beans and slang, you will find a bunch of people who say that it was popularized by the television show Full House, which

I did see that, yeah.

And the phrase cool beans was already well entrenched in American slang by 1987. It was already underway. So I may have popularized it if it was on there at all, but it certainly didn't coin it or start it. Okay. Well, I can't even remember when I started hearing it. I love that. Thank you. I can't wait to tell everybody the next time they start asking. I'm thinking about this phrase and it just, it's terrifying.

completely nonsensical, right? I mean, what's great about beans that are cool? I'd rather have mine warm. Right. What about a three-bean salad, Martha? Oh, that's true. I always hated that salad, but it is a cool salad. Well, you know, it's funny when you said that, I thought the same thing. Yeah, it's like, okay, that hasn't ever been my favorite. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't know, but beans have been used as slang for money. Maybe cool beans means good money. I don't know. That could be. And there's lots of speculation about this, but really we don't know the origin of cool beans and we don't know why beans. It's just a catchphrase. Right. Well, Martita, thank you so much for calling. It's been great to talk with you. You as well. Thank you. You guys take care. Have a wonderful day. Take care. Bye-bye. You too. Take care. Bye-bye. Call us 877-929-9673.

Pat Armstrong writes from Bishop, California, In college, we had a history teacher who gave a lecture on Luf Lerpa, the famous Norwegian who saved mankind during the Second World War. None of us had heard of this guy, so we all took meticulous notes. The lecture happened to be on April 1st, and it wasn't until weeks later that someone realized that Luf Lerpa was April Fool spelled backwards. Ha ha ha!

That's outstanding. Yeah, talk about an anadrome. Call us to talk about language, 877-929-9673, or send your thoughts in email to words at waywardradio.org. Hello, you have a way with words. Hi.

Hi, I'm Olivia Levy, and I'm calling from Somerville, New Jersey. Hi, Olivia. How are you doing? Good. How are you? All right. We're glad to have you. What's going on, Olivia? So last year, I had this crazy spelling word on my spelling list for spelling bee, and it was zoleal, X-Y-L-Y-L. And everybody was like, oh, my God, what is that word?

because we had never seen it before. So I was wondering what it means. Oh, X-Y-L-Y-L? Mm-hmm. Yeah, ZYLO. ZYLO.

So did any of you guys look it up in a dictionary? I think we did, but it didn't make sense to us what it said. Yeah, this is a very unusual word. I'm looking in the Oxford English Dictionary, which gives the definition, the hypothetical radical C8H9 of xylene and its derivatives. Oh, that's brilliant.

I guess that settles that. Thanks for calling, Olivia. No, I'm kidding. Does that help, Olivia? Not really. Yeah, yeah, I agree with you there. It's not very helpful at all. Unless you're in a spelling bee or you're going to become a chemist or you really want to outsmart people in Scrabble, right?

I doubt you're ever going to run across this word again, xylil. Definitely. Let me give it a try because there are a couple of interesting things to say about this word. Xylil, X-Y-L-Y-L, refers to a group of atoms that are derived from a clear flammable liquid called xylene, X-Y-L-E-N-E.

And one of the sources of this chemical, xylene, is wood tar. And that's a sticky substance that can be made from burned wood that's squeezed really hard. And that's how the chemical xylene got its name. And you probably know that scientists like to invent words based on Greek and Latin words. And the really cool thing is that xylene comes from the ancient Greek word for wood, xylon. Mm-hmm.

That's cool. It's very picturesque, and I'll tell you what's even cooler, Olivia. There's another word in English that comes from the Greek word for wood that you already know. I know you know this word. Xylophone? Yes. Yes.

Yes, that's it. Yes, xylophone comes from Greek words that literally mean wooden voice because, you know, a xylophone has all those wooden bars of different sizes and you beat on them and music comes out, right? It's from the same root as xylene and xylol. And that's probably the coolest thing I know about xylol is that it goes all the way back to an ancient Greek word for wood and

and just keep it in your back pocket in case you're ever playing Scrabble. Good idea. Well, thank you so much for sharing this with you. Are you going to use it for anything else? I'll probably use it to stump my friends. To stump your friends? Perfect. Yeah, hangman Scrabble. How'd you do in the spelling bee?

Well, I won in my class, and then in the school, I was second place. Wow. That's not bad. That's pretty good. Well done. That's impressive. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, Grant and I have both been in Spelling Bees together, and it makes me really nervous. Yeah, believe it or not, we've been the expert spellers, and we're both looking at each other like, what are we doing up here? I'm not that good. Yeah.

Thank you for talking with us, Olivia. We really appreciate it. And I hope you're well and take care of yourself. All right. Thank you. You too. All right. Bye-bye. Okay. Thanks for this interesting question. Thank you. Bye. Bye.

There's a story behind every word. Sometimes we know them, sometimes we don't. But give us a shot. Maybe we know the story behind your word or phrase. 877-929-9673. Or tell us what you know about something we don't know. Words at waywardradio.org. ♪

Grant, in a previous episode, we talked about the verb twack, T-W-A-C-K. You remember that? The term that has been used in Newfoundland for window shopping. Right, to shop, to go twacking. But we neglected to mention the verb twock, T-W-O-C-K. Do you know this one? No, it sounds like something Lewis Carroll might have used.

Well, you're right about the British connection anyway. TWOC, T-W-O-C, is the offensive taking a car without an owner's consent. It's for the purpose of joyriding usually, so you can go TWOCing. So it means car theft, and it's an acronym used in police slang from the words taking without owner's consent, TWOCing.

Oh, yes. I think I have heard that. Yeah. It reminds me of back when I was a general assignment newspaper reporter, every once in a while we had to do a stint in what we called the cop shop, which was this little office where you would just go in and you would listen to the police scanner all day. And they often talked about T-butt, T-butt over $100 or T-butt under $100. And T-butt was theft by unlawful taking. T-butt. Oh, nice. Nice.

Share your linguistic memories with us, 877-929-9673.

Hey there, travelers. Kaley Cuoco here. Sorry to interrupt your music, great artist BT Dubs, but wouldn't you rather be there to hear it live? With Priceline, you can get out of your dreams and into your dream concert. They've got millions of travel deals to get you to that festival, gig, rave, sound bath, or sonic experience you've been dreaming of. Download the Priceline app today, and you can save up to 60% off hotels and up to 50% off flights. So don't just dream about that trip. Book it with Priceline. ♪ Got your happy price, Priceline ♪

You're listening to A Way With Words, the show about language and how we use it. I'm Martha Barnett. And I'm Grant Barrett, and we're joined by that man of mystery, our quiz guy, John Chonesky, who has been coming up with some devious quizzes for us to do. Well, Grant. Hi, Martha. Hello. You guys have seen a picture of my dog, Goldie.

before, I'm pretty sure. Oh, beautiful creature. Yeah, I know. She's really nice. Anyway, people and dogs have evolved together in a unique way. So of course our language reflects that. And there are additions to English that would not have appeared without dogs. There's even an internet language relating to dogs called, among other things, dogolingo or wolf or bork. Now here are a few questions about words inspired by dogs.

If you boop your dog on the nose, you might say, but if you take the word boop and change one letter, you get a word that in doggo lingo means the action of a dog sticking out their tongue and forgetting to put it back in. Oh, it's blop. It is blop, yes. BLP. Do you know what you call it when a cat does it?

It's a blep, B-L-E-P. It's a blep, yes. It's also melem, M-L-E-M, which some people say, well, why do we need a word like that? Well, if you're ever doing a crossword puzzle and you're constructing one and you need a space for M-L-E-M, trust me, it comes in handy.

Now, somebody gifted us with a doggy DNA test, and we've discovered that Goldie is, as expected, a mix of Beagle, Golden Retriever, Chow Chow, and a few other breeds. But the word mutt is derived from a word for another type of animal. Do you know what it is? Yeah, a sheep. A sheep, yeah. Do you know how that came about? Oh, this is way back in my...

Deep reaches of my memory, but it seems to me it had to do with muttonhead, didn't it? That's right. Mouton or mouton. And it became mutton. In 1800s, people would call people muttonhead, and that was clipped to mutt to mean anybody. It was a term of derision for two-legged as well as four-legged animals. And then a mongrel dog. So yeah, a sheep. Very good.

Now, we can talk about felines for a moment because it relates to dogs. Now, there's a small furry insect crawling around in your garden. It gets its name from a French dialect for a hairy cat. You know what that is, right? Sure. Caterpillar. Caterpillar, yes. But the modern French for caterpillar must have come about because someone thought they resembled small doggies. It's the same word for a type of fuzzy fabric whose ridges resemble the caterpillar. Do you know what that is?

Chenille. Chenille, yes. Chen, yes. Chenille, small dog. And we get a caterpillar. Very nice. Now, Dogolingo has several words for dogs. Dogo, naturally, but also pupper, pupperino. And what word that's also used by audiophiles? Used by audiophiles? How about woofer? It is woofer. Oh, woofer. A woofer, a speaker designed to produce low-frequency sounds.

It's derived from a dog's woof, so what comes around, you know, there you go. Now, there's a term for a person's awareness of the position and movement of their own body. Do you know what that is? Yes. Proprioception. Right. Now, you can probably figure out a term I coined. I noticed while walking Goldie, I was highly aware of the location of her relative to me and the location of other dog walkers and their dogs. So I turned proprioception into what?

Pup-reo-ception. Pup-reo-ception, right. So let's do our best to further that word now. Pup-reo-ception is a new word fully coined here on A Way With Words. So now you guys have done very well. Good dog. Good dog. Well done. Thanks, John. We'll talk to you next week. Thanks for the fun and thanks for the pets. Talk to you then. And you can call us anytime, 877-929-9673 with your thoughts and ideas about language.

And send us your words related to dogs or any other pet to words at waywardradio.org. Hello, you have a way with words. Hi, Grant. This is Constance from San Antonio, Texas. Hi, Constance. How are you doing? I'm doing well. How are you? Super duper. Welcome to the show. Hey, Constance. Welcome. Hi, Martha. It is so great to talk to you guys.

I'm calling because I had a discussion with my husband and we have a little disagreement going on. So I wanted to check with you guys and get your thoughts on the matter. Our marriage counseling rate is $150 an hour for first visit? Yes, exactly. Okay.

All right, bring it. What's the story? We were talking the other day, and we were listening to music, and a song by the band Queen came on. And I mentioned to him that I regret never having been able to see Queen in concert because I was three when Freddie Mercury died. And he argued that I can't regret...

that I have no control over, as I obviously didn't have control over when Freddie Mercury died. And I think that I can regret something that I have no control over. So we disagree strongly, and I'm feeling pretty good that I'm right about this one. Wow, what an interesting question. You know, I know what I feel, Constance, and then I know what the dictionaries say. And I think the dictionary agrees with me, and he disagrees with the dictionaries.

Yeah. Yeah. When when you first brought this up, I'm thinking, well, I agree with her husband because I associate regret with blaming myself or kicking myself. You know, like I I let myself down or I let somebody else down. There's an element of remorse there. Yeah. I think I would be more inclined to say I feel wistful.

you know, about seeing Freddie Mercury. But clearly, you're correct. I mean, Constance, dictionaries agree with you.

I'm looking at the usage note in Merriam-Webster, which has a little note about distinguishing the meaning of words like sorrow and grief and anguish and woe and regret. And there it says that regret implies pain caused by deep disappointment, fruitless longing, or unavailing remorse. So it includes the remorse that I was talking about, but also fruitless longing.

The longing, exactly. That's my view. That's your view? I mean, I suppose you could say, you know, I regret the fleeting nature of youth. Or even I regret to inform you. You know, there's nothing I can do about it, but I have to inform you. Yeah. Yeah. So Travis disagrees. May we speak with Travis? Yes. He's right here. One second. Okay.

Hi, Martha. Hi, Grant. This is Travis calling from San Antonio, Texas. How are you? Hi, Travis. What's it like to be wrong? Well, I think it's a matter of opinion and

And the debate wages, I'll say that much. All right. So explain your point of view. So your point of view is that regret is really about something that you have control over. I do. I think that, and let me qualify this by saying I had no sighting of the dictionary, what

It was a gut response on my part. And I just, I said, I felt that, you know, words are tools and the original usage of the word regret demonstrates something that you have control over, something that you have autonomy over. And I know that people use it in different instances all the time, but I think in its spirit, it's,

something that you have to have a hand in. You know, I don't regret negotiations that broke down in, you know, the Middle East because I didn't have anything to do with it. I didn't, I don't regret meeting, you know, a famous celebrity, Albert Einstein. I don't regret that I never got to sit down and have a cup of coffee with the guy because

Gosh, so many reasons why that was not possible. So, again, I say it from a gut response. You know, it just doesn't seem like that's the correct usage of the word. And so that's where I am. Okay. Yeah. I could buy that except regurgitation.

Regret has, like many words in English, more than one meaning. So you're focused on this very personal meaning, the common sense that we have when we say, I'm going to send my regrets because I can't attend that party. Or, you know, I regret that I crashed your car when you loaned it to me. Things like that, right? You're talking about this personal meaning.

very individual regret. And I appreciate that because that is the regret that we most often encounter. The regret that Martha was talking about, and I think that Constance is referring to, is the broader regret. And it's a valid sense of the word, but perhaps less common. And so perhaps that's the division between the two of you, that you're talking about this more common personal regret. And Constance is thinking about

A less common, broader regret. Sure. I'm the guy that looks at the dictionary and I see definition number one. Boom. And I don't bother to go to definition number three. Right. I get it. You go to Yelp looking for a restaurant, you go to the first one? Yeah. If it were better, if it were a better definition, it'd be number one.

All right. That's a method. That's one way to do it. No, I kid. I kid. I kid you as well. You're not wrong so much as just acknowledge that it has more than one meaning and you're good to go.

All right. Thank you, Travis. We appreciate you being a good sport. Thanks so much, Martha and Grant. I'm going to hand it back to Constance. Hello. Hello, Constance. All right. So does he have to do the dishes for a month? So I get to have a child-free night once.

Wow. By myself. It's been a long 12 months. So this is exciting. So you're going to listen to Freddie Mercury and make probably so. Yes. In celebration. I think so.

Well, y'all got to call us again with something that Travis can win. We absolutely will. We absolutely will. It was such a pleasure to talk to you guys. Thank you, Constance. And I've been listening for a long time. Appreciate it. So thank you so much. Take care. Enjoy that pizza. All right. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. 877-929-9673.

Here's a handy term that was new to me, to play box and cocks. Do you know this term, Grant? To play box, B-O-X, and cocks, C-O-C-K-S? Yes, and I will just add that the B and the C are capitalized. To play box and cocks.

Hmm. No, no idea. It sounds like it might be British. I don't know why I'm saying that, but I have no idea. Yes, because you usually guess these things. It's rhyming slang, I bet.

No, it's not rhyming slang. It refers to an arrangement in which people take turns occupying the same space at different times. So, for example, you might share an office on alternating days with someone or you use it in the morning, they use it in the evening. You and the other worker are said to play box and cocks.

And that comes from the title of an 1847 farce by John Madison Morton. And in this play, there's a London lodging housekeeper who leases one apartment to two men. And neither of the guys knows that the other is renting that apartment during the other time. So by day, the apartment is occupied by John Boxx.

And by night, it's leased to a guy named James Cox. And as you can imagine, hilarity ensues. So to play boxing Cox. Yeah.

That's awesome. To share the same desk is also known as hot desking. Yes. And to share the same bed on different sheets is known as hot sheeting. Ah, didn't know the latter. Yeah, that's the kind of thing that they might do back in the gold mining days when everything was really expensive in California. So you would just, somebody would get out of bed and you'd pay your quarter and get in it. Oh, man. The things we learn. The things we learn. Yeah.

And we'd love to learn from you, so call us to talk about language, 877-929-9673, or send your observations to words at waywardradio.org. Welcome to A Way With Words. Hi, this is Squire Babcock, and I'm calling from Murray, Kentucky. What would you like to talk with us about? My maternal grandmother...

used a word that I've never heard anywhere else, and I've asked all sorts of people. I was a professor in the English department at Murray State for 25 years, and I asked a whole bunch of people. But my grandmother, who was probably born right around the turn of the century, the 1900s, 1900 or so, and was the daughter of a German immigrant,

would, when we went to visit her or when it was summertime, she would occasionally say, it's hot as flugins, or she was telling a story, she'd say, it was hot as flugins. And I have always been curious about the word and can never, have never been able to find words

where it's from, what it means, and so forth. Or maybe even how it's spelled, huh? Exactly. I've just spelled it phonetically. F-L-U-G-E-N-S is what it sounds like to me. I can still hear her saying it.

I don't know. Where in flugions is flugions is a question that I've come up with for you. Where in flugions is flugions. That's a good question. Your grandmother wasn't alone in using that expression. It goes back to the 1830s.

and it's kind of a euphemism for hell. It's an all-around youth emphasizing and comparative. So you might say, besides saying hot as flugins, you might say making money like flugins or ran like flugins. And there's the inverse as well. You might say it's cold as blue flugins, blue flugins being a common variation as well. It shows up.

Right.

It just so happens that that little dictionary in May of 1830 includes the word flugens, and they define it. And basically, they define it as fire and kindling. So flugens, as far as they're concerned, means something that's hot, something that's on fire. So if you're saying hot as flugens, you're saying hot as a little bit of fire and kindling. How did they spell it in that dictionary? F-L-U-G-E-N-S.

Although over the years, over the 150 plus years since that little dictionary, you'll find it spelled, oh, 10, 15 different ways because that's not one of those words that's often written down. More often passed from mouth to ear. Yeah. Yes. That's really cool to hear. It makes some sense. My grandmother was...

from a sort of principled and careful family and background. And so they might have not used the word hell,

Instead, they might have adopted flugians to be more proper. Thank you for bringing this to light and sharing your memory of it with us and everyone else. Thanks for finding out about it for me. That answers a long-lived question for me, so appreciate it. All right. Take care of yourself. Thanks for calling. Bye-bye. Yeah. Thank you. Bye-bye.

877-929-9673 or talk to us on Twitter at W-A-Y-W-O-R-D. Vartan Gregorian was a remarkable man. He was born in Armenia and eventually ended up in the United States. He spoke several languages and went on into a career in academia. He was president of Brown University and also president-elect of the Carnegie Corporation.

But he took a break in the 1980s to reinvigorate the New York Public Library, which was in pretty bad shape all the way around financially and just physically until he took over and ended up raising millions and millions of dollars to support the library. He once told an interviewer that the library is a sacred place.

He said, think of a lone person in one of our reading rooms who has just read a book, a single book that has perhaps not been read in 20 years by another living soul. And from that reading comes an invention of incalculable importance to the human race. It makes a man tremble. And Grant, he was so good at articulating the importance of libraries, the vitality of libraries, and how they really can change lives.

I think he did it. He did it very well. Because when you walk up the steps of the big library in New York City on Fifth Avenue, you walk up between the two stone lions named Patience and Fortitude, and you walk into that big building, you feel exactly what he's talking about. You feel...

You feel like there's a chance to improve yourself. You feel like you can do just about anything. And you look around you and you see everyone else doing the same thing. People from the whole world in this one building working toward a goal that will improve themselves and their communities. It's an incredible feeling.

to have that happen. Exactly. I think you've zeroed in on the feeling. You feel connected. You feel connected to the past. You feel connected to other minds and other people. What a gift and what a legacy to leave. There are probably libraries and librarians that left an impact on you. Tell us about them. Words at waywardradio.org or call us 877-929-9673. ♪

Business taxes. We're stressing about all the time and all the money you spent on your taxes. This is my bill? Now Business Taxes is a TurboTax small business expert who does your taxes for you and offers year-round advice at no additional cost so you can keep more money in your business. Now this is taxes. Intuit TurboTax. Get an expert now on TurboTax.com slash business. Only available with TurboTax Live Full Service.

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 Barnett. King George VI of England died in February 1952, 15 years after his brother's abdication, and 27-year-old Queen Elizabeth took the throne.

Shortly afterward, the widowed Queen Mother received a gift from the noted poet Edith Sitwell. It was a book edited by Sitwell, which included soothing poetry, as well as some writing by gardeners and philosophers and cooks and other people. And in response to this, the Queen Mother sent a lovely thank you note that I wanted to share. Dear Miss Sitwell,

It was so very kind of you to send me a copy of your lovely book. It is giving me the greatest pleasure. And I took it out with me, and I started to read it, sitting by the river. And it was a day when one felt engulfed by great black clouds of unhappiness and misery, and I found a sort of peace stealing round my heart as I read such lovely poems and heavenly words.

I found a hope in George Herbert's poem, which she goes on to quote, And then she continues,

And I thought how small and selfish is sorrow, but it bangs one about until one is senseless. And I can never thank you enough for giving me such a delicious book wherein I found so much beauty and hope quite suddenly one day by the river. I'm deeply touched by your thought of me. I love being given books and

and I send you my warmest thanks. I'm yours very sincerely, Elizabeth R. And Grant, there are so many things that strike me about this letter. I mean, first of all, in the context of a death in the royal family in England just recently, and the fact that all of us grieve and grieve in our own ways, and

and how the gift of a book of comforting poetry could make such a difference, even for somebody so exalted as the Queen Mother. To sit by the river and read poetry. Yeah. Sounds like a cure-all for a lot of things, doesn't it? Yeah. It's not going to fix your bank account. It might not fix your body, but it might help with your mind. No matter what your station in life, I really appreciated her description of sorrow and how it

bangs one about until one is senseless. And I loved the George Herbert's metaphor of the heart as a bit of plant life that had gone underground during the winter, but had come out again in the spring and turned green. Yes, recovered greenness. So anyway, I just thought that was a super cool letter. We're always on the lookout for your favorite passages. What's a bit of writing that you turn to again and again to mull over, to reread, or to contemplate?

share it with us, 877-929-9673. Email us, words at waywardradio.org, or tell us on Twitter at W-A-Y-W-O-R-D. Grant, there was the husband who didn't remember what his wife wanted him to plant in the garden. So you know what happened? What? So he asked her. That's from Tammy Elmer Livingston on our Facebook group. So A-S-T-E-R, the flower, instead of K-S-K-E-D-H-E-R. Right.

Exactly. Hey,

877-929-9673. Hello, you have a way with words. Hi, this is Sadie. My pronouns are she, her, hers, and I'm calling from San Diego. Hi, Sadie. Welcome to the show. Hi, Sadie. Hi, Martha and Grant. How are you both? Excellent. Thank you. What can we help you with? Okay, so I have a couple of questions, and they both have to do with my experience as an immigrant. So here's the first part.

I immigrated to Oklahoma from the Philippines when I was nine years old. And when I started living here in the States, my dad said that we would speak only in English. So from here on out, even at home. And eventually it dawned on me that I had started dreaming only in English. So there came a point.

when I no longer dreamed in my primary language, which is Tagalog. And when I tell others about my experience as an immigrant, I frequently bring that up. I tell them exactly this. I knew that I had mastered English when I started dreaming only in English. So the first part of my question is, how true is that statement?

Is that concept of dreaming in a new language a common phenomenon that immigrants experience as they adapt to their new home? Does dreaming in a certain language indicate fluency of that language? So that's the first part of my question. And my second question is, about a year after living in the States, I learned that the English word dream

"bunduk" originated from the Tagalog word "bunduk," which means "nothing." And that took me by surprise because at that time I've already programmed myself to believe that English and Tagalog are completely separate.

So now there's this instance of that belief being upended. So my second question is, are there any other English roots that have their roots from Tagalog or any other Filipino dialect? So your first question was about dreaming in another language. And if I get this right, it's does dreaming in another language mean that you have...

approach some kind of fluency in that other language, right? A language other than your first. You know, the first time you wake up from a dream and you realize, oh my gosh, I was speaking in my second language. I mean, that's a real milestone for people learning other language, right? Yeah. Yeah.

I actually did remember waking up and I was excited. I told my dad, I dreamed only in English. That's crazy. But I haven't dreamt in Tagalog ever since then. So that's why when I tell people about my immigrant story, like, oh, I just knew at that point. I'm like a full-fledged fluent English speaker now. That's so interesting, Sadie.

I would put a hedge on that, though, and say that people do dream in other languages at all levels of learning a language. So people who are only learning cramming a bunch of phrases into the brain before going on a vacation, they also have those phrases pop up in their dreams. Or people who haven't spoken another language in decades may suddenly find these phrases popping up in their brains for no good reason at all. Dreams are weird. They're kind of...

This strange inventory of our experiences, either recent or distant. And so they mean that you have some of that language in your brain. So that's the good news. It doesn't necessarily mean that you are perfectly fluent yet. It means that you're on the path to understanding and comprehension. So you can find if you search any language,

second language learner forum on the internet, you'll find people talking about this and they all have the excitement that you have. And that's the wonderful part of it is the energy that it gives you when you realize, oh, I've passed a milestone. This is so nice that I'm getting there. And you sound wonderful, by the way. How young were you when you started learning English? So in the Philippines, we're actually taught English in schools.

So, like, even started in preschool, like, four years old. I was already being taught English in school, but I spoke in Tagalog at home. So, you've also mentioned boondocks. It's true. During the Spanish-American War, when the American Marines were in the Philippines, they did bring back boondock. And actually, during other wars,

where the Americans have had soldiers stationed in the Philippines. Boondock, meaning mountain, did come back. And here in this country, it means a remote place. If you live in the boondocks, it means you live far away or out in the boonies. As we abbreviate it, boondocks is shortened to boonies.

out in the sticks or the hills. So yeah, that is one Tagalog word that is in English. But there's another word that you might be delighted to learn that is not only in English, that comes from the Philippines, that is used around the world. It's yo-yo. Really? Yo-yo.

Yes! I didn't know that! Yeah, it was originally called a bandolor, if you believe it or not. B-A-N-D-A-L-O-R-E. It's now archaic. Nobody uses it. But this guy named Pedro Flores in the Philippines brought the name to California in the 1920s. He was bought out by a guy named Duncan. Duncan bought the idea and the name from Flores, and now everyone calls them yo-yos around the world. Oh!

Oh, I didn't know that that was actually a Tagalog word. I thought like, you know, like they came upon it as a toy and somebody just coined the term yo-yo. Okay, neat. No language stands alone. And I just think you really just opened up this wonderful topic here. This is just, we could talk all day about this, but thank you, Sandy and Paul. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Bye.

You, our listeners, have experiences with second, third, fourth, and even beyond languages. What have you encountered with dreaming in another language or having to work with a language that you're not quite yet perfect in? Share your stories, 877-929-9673, or tell us the tale in email, words at waywardradio.org.

Here's a little word you might not know, scrimption. As defined in an 1830s newspaper, it's the minutest atom, the little end of nothing sharpened. Sharpening nothing. A fine point of nothing.

A scrimption. Hit us up on Twitter at W-A-Y-W-O-R-D. Welcome to A Way With Words. Hi, my name is Theora Ward, and I'm calling from Heinsberg, Vermont. Well, welcome, Theora, to A Way With Words. What can we do for you? Thank you. Well, I have this saying that my mother used to say, and I've been trying to find out for decades where it came from. No one that I've ever met has ever heard it before.

So she used to say, would you like me to show you a little trick with a hole in it? We used to make a lot of things together. We did a lot of sewing and knitting and

baking together and we would be sitting together and she would notice something that I was doing and know a better, faster way to do it. And she would look over and she would kind of nudge, nudge with the elbow and kind of in a conspiratorial way, hey, would you like me to show you a little trick with a hole in it?

I would love to know where that came from. Did she ever show you a little trick with a hole in it? Well, any new thing, you know, anything that we were doing, and she would say, I'll show you, you could do it this way. That would be the little trick with a hole in it. Okay. A faster way, a better way.

Yeah, either faster or better or different or in some way different from what I was doing. That conforms to what I know about the expression. She's not the only one that's used it. It's not really in much use these days. In the 1800s and early 1900s, you would have seen it much more often. And then it was more often used to mean something extraordinary or a devious trick.

Often a trick that would turn the tables on someone else. So you might, if someone was mean to you, you might then show them a trick with a hole in it by getting your revenge, especially in a political sense. But the earliest that I know this expression is from the 1850s. And I don't really know for certain what it means, but it's always about...

What you said is sometimes it's conspiratorial. Often it's a better idea or a better way to do something. Again, sometimes it's a little bit of revenge or something extraordinary. Often it's directed at kids. And this leads me to one particular use of it I found in a journal called The Photographic News in the 1890s. And it's by a guy named J.M. Brainerd.

And he's talking about taking photographs of kids. And he's talking about all the little gimmicks that he uses to get kids to cooperate for photographs. And just as now, it's hard to get kids to behave so that you get that one photograph that you can keep forever. And so he talks about having a cupboard filled with toy cats, birds, dogs, dolls, bells, ribbon-belled sticks, horses in hoops, whole bunches of things.

And he has what he calls, and he puts this in quotes, a trick with a hole in it. And he describes it as a 14 by 17 cardboard six inch circular opening cut out of the center. It's for peekaboo at short range. And he says, this always hangs outside the cupboard. And it is the little Joker that takes the most unpromising child with its most angelic expression.

And so I don't know that this is the start of a trick with a hole in it, that maybe photographers were using this idea as a trick with a hole in it from the very beginning. It's very curious to me that it checks so many of the boxes of what you describe. Sort of, but it also has the first thing that you said was that it was, you know, a trick that had that something would go wrong with her. It had a.

a devious reasoning behind it. It sounded a little bit more sinister. Yeah, and this was done without that feeling to it. I never had that feeling for it. Yeah. The main problem is, of course, that the first use I find is in 1854, and this photographer's use of it is 1891, and that's a huge gap. So,

We don't really know the origin of it. We just know that again and again when it's used. Here's an interesting tip for you. As a word researcher, I often look for expressions that are wrapped in quote marks. Because what do we do in English when a word is new to us or we consider it special? We set it off with quote marks or we put it in italics or some other way we indicate that it's special. So this photographer, all these 100 plus years later, is telling me

is a language researcher, a word researcher, that he considers a trick with a hole in it to be special to his vocabulary. So that's your trick with a hole in it as a slang lexicographer. Yeah. Look for the quote marks. Yeah, I do. If I find a phrase with quote marks around it, like just a three or four word phrase, I often pay a little more attention to it to see if it's something I need to record and try to do a little research on.

Yeah. Well, Theora, it remains a mystery, but we really appreciate your bringing this phrase to the show. I had never heard it, and I love it. Thanks. Bye. Bye-bye. Thanks.

If you have a warm memory about something a brother or sister said or a favorite aunt or uncle or a teacher used to use all of the time, maybe a professor who really made an impact on you, give us a call at 877-929-9673 or tell us the story in email words at waywardradio.org. ♪

I don't know about you, but I am a fan of a good newspaper correction, and I love the one that ran recently in a San Francisco paper. You may have seen this article. It was about a big bear that wandered into the home of a Pasadena, California woman, and the bear was caught

on the home security video. And it's really worth looking up online because you see the bear wandering around in the house and then it's chased out by two fearless little terriers named Squirt and Maymay.

Which was wonderful in and of itself, but they had to run a correction at the end of this story, which went, editor's note, a previous version of this story stated that the bear is a brown bear. While it is a bear that is brown, it is not a brown bear. It is a black bear that is brown. The story has been updated to reflect this. Meaning it is not the type of...

species known as the brown bear in common terms. It's brown, but it's actually a black bear. I love that. And it's, it's parsable. I mean, and it's so, so fun because English is weird with that emphasis that we can do that. It reminds me of the scene in Wreck-It Ralph where a lot of the bad guys from all the different video games are sitting around having a, a kind of a,

a group therapy session and one of the guys I think is that plays a wrestler character says to the guys you're a bad guy but you're not a bad guy oh I see like you're a brown bear but you're not a brown bear yeah

Send us your favorite newspaper corrections or other thoughts about language, 877-929-9673, or email it to words at waywardradio.org.

Thanks to senior producer Stephanie Levine, editor Tim Felton, and production assistant Rachel Elizabeth Weisler. You can send us messages, subscribe to the podcast and newsletter, and catch up on hundreds of past episodes at waywardradio.org. Our toll-free line is always open in the U.S. and Canada, 877-929-9673, or email us words at waywardradio.org.

Away With Words is an independent production of Wayward, Inc., a nonprofit supported by listeners and organizations who are changing the way the world talks about language. Many thanks to Wayward board member and our friend Bruce Rogo for his help and expertise. Thanks for listening. I'm Grant Barrett. And I'm Martha Barnett. Until next time, goodbye. Bye-bye. ♪