Eat My Hat - 30 June 2025
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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. And listeners are still chiming in about the question, what would you plant if you were a, and then various professions, such as a jeweler who might plant carrots? And we heard from Reed Pomeroy in La Crosse, Wisconsin, who offered a couple of answers that I'd never heard before. He suggested that baseball players would plant, plant what, Grant? Carrots.

Pitchers? There you go. Pitcher plants. Yes. Gotcha. Yes. And this one really had me puzzled for a while. He said prospective pet owners might plant orchids. Because you get them spayed and neutered? That's what I was thinking at first. Orchidectomies? That's what I was thinking at first. I went straight to the Greek and orchids meaning testicle. But I think what he means is

Is you have either pets or kids. Oh, that's pretty good. Oh, bonus points on that one. A plus. What else you got, Martha? Well, I got one more set of answers, and this is what would a linguist plant? Oh, what would a linguist plant? Well, Chuck Smiler from New Bedford, Massachusetts, suggested that a linguist might plant root vegetables. Nice.

Nice. And then Ramona Mandy from Melbourne, Australia wrote to us and said, well, of course, a linguist would plant parsley. Parsley. And both of those plants would have lots of, if a linguist planted lots of root vegetables in an etymologist's garden, they would have lots of stems. Yes.

Oh, my goodness. But that's kind of cheating because that's where we get the language from, right? We talk about roots and stems because we're just borrowing from nature. Yes. Well, Grant, I want to say a personal thank you to you for tolerating all these puns. Oh, you'll pay later. I'm not going to tell you how, but you'll pay. I'm sure that's the case.

If you like puns, you can send them all to Martha at waywardradio.org. If you have any other language questions, you can send them to me and Martha to words at waywardradio.org. And we've got this magical toll-free number that accepts texts

Texts and phone calls 24 hours a day from the United States and Canada, 877-929-9673. And if you're not in those two countries, you can find lots of ways to reach us on our website at waywardradio.org, where you'll also find all of our past episodes at no charge.

Hello, you have a way with words. Hi, this is Allison from San Diego. So my son was reading a book last month, and the title of the book was Shiver Me Timbers, Five Pirate Stories. And he had asked me what

what shiver me timbers means and where it came from. And I often with him in the car on Sundays while we're driving errands, listen to away with words and thought, you know what, this might be a really good question for you guys. Oh, it's a good one indeed. What did you tell him? I told him that it probably had something to do with pirate ships being made of wood and masts and storms shaking, but that was just me sort of pulling something together based

based on logical thought. And did he pick up the expression? He did. He started saying it to me more as an expression when he was concerned or worried about something. Oh, really? So if he had a test coming up in the morning, you know, we'd get up and get ready for school and he'd be like, oh, shiver me timbers. I hope I do well on that math test. Yeah.

Very cute. Oh, that's adorable. Yeah, you're on the right track there. Timber in this sense, timbers, refers to the wooden beams that make up the structure of a ship's hull and ribs, which of course are really important to sailors today.

And in the late 18th century, you might hear sailors exclaiming, my timbers, as part of a mild oath. You know, may God split my timbers and may God smite my timbers. And to invoke that kind of disaster, them being burst or split or smitten, it's a kind of mild act.

oath. And the shiver part of this is super interesting because it has nothing to do with the word that has to do with your teeth chattering and your body shaking because you're so cold. That's an old word of uncertain origin. But this shiver, this verb, is a completely different but similarly spelled word that means to shatter or to break into lots of small pieces.

Later, the phrase shiver my timbers was used in comic fiction to suggest the language of pirates, you know, pirates are. And and it was popularized then in 1881 by Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. Long John Silver is always talking about shivering someone's timbers, shivering his own timbers.

So it became sort of, over time, sort of a caricature of pirate language. Yeah, in the book, Long John Silver says things like, shiver my sides and shiver my soul. My favorite quote in the book from Long John Silver, he's threatening his crew because they're getting mutinous.

And he's talking about the deadly consequences if they mutiny. And he says, cross me and you'll go where many a good man's gone before you. First and last these 30 year back, some to the yardarm shiver my sides and some by the board and all to feed the fishes.

Don't cross him. Yeah. So it's a good book. I think it's good that your son is having his pirate phase. It's a little bit after the dinosaur phase, right? Yes. Yes. A bit after dinosaurs, dragons, and now we're into pirates. Yes. And then what's next? Vampires? Maybe. We'll see. Aliens? Maybe aliens. Yeah. Maybe aliens. Aliens.

Yeah, but you might explain to him that this kind of shiver has nothing to do with the kind of shiver that happens when you're cold. This kind of shiver means to shatter or break into lots of small fragments. There may have been a post-influence by people who thought they were related, but they didn't start being related. So it's very complicated. English is ridiculous. But fun, so that's good. Yeah.

But Allison, thank you for your call and keep that kid reading, all right? Awesome. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time. All right. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. We'd love hearing about the books you're reading or the books your kids are reading and whatever language you picked up from it that you have questions about, we'll help you sort through it. Call us or text us toll-free, 877-929-9673. You can still reach us. There are lots of ways. Find them all on our website at waywardradio.org.

Welcome to A Way With Words. Hi, my name is Jerome. I'm calling from Fort Worth, Texas. Hey, Jerome. Welcome to the show. What can we do for you? Hey there. So, I had an interesting experience. I had taken my kid to Waffle House, and he had said on the drive over there, oh, I really hope they don't make the bacon crispy. It's like, okay, we can ask for it. And so when I was ordering our meal, I asked for the Polly Bacon.

Um, and the cook, I know I do what I meant. I said, Oh, well, I want to, you know, like soft and chewy. Um, and at first I thought it was just the, uh, just the, the waiter that didn't understand it. Um, I asked the cooks, they'd never heard that phrase before. Um, so then I

I turned to the next best thing and posted on a Texas Reddit to see if they've heard this phrase before. What's the phrase? Holy bacon. How are you spelling that? You know, I have never seen it spelled. So I can only best guess P-U-L.

L-L-E-Y, or maybe just the Y at the end. So P as in Paul, U as in universe, L as in llama, llama, Y as in yellow, pulley. Yeah, or maybe there's an E-Y. Again, I've never seen it spelled. Okay. And yeah, so I turned to Reddit and got a very resounding response.

Nope, never heard of that. It's not a southern thing, or at least not a Texas thing. But I recall hearing my grandmother call it that. I grew up in like northern Mississippi, western Tennessee area. And so I'm just trying to hound this down. I know y'all will be the people to talk to. Do you know it, Martha? Have you heard it before? I have never heard Pooley Bacon. Never, ever. Well, it's not Pooley Bacon as a condiment.

compound that I'm thinking about. I'm thinking about pulley as an adjective to describe food. Like you pull. Yeah. Because this is where the action is, Jerome. This is where we get excitement. You know, this is the car chase of this little movie we're making here. Because that's an adjective that people do use to describe food.

So you were right to use pulley to describe bacon if you meant certain things about that bacon. Yeah, the way it's cooked, you know, soft, chewy. And so I was shocked that it took out on my surprise. Let me give you some examples of where I found it. For example, in the 1990 cookbook by Bill Neal called Biscuits, Spoonbread, and Sweet Potato Pie, he talks about sweet potato biscuits and

And he talks about just this fantastic result you get if you make them correctly. And he says the results are rich, rather chewy, pulley biscuits and rolls. And he's talking about that texture you get when you pull the two halves of the biscuits apart so that you can put butter or toppings in the middle.

And on the Eater website, George German of Al Forno Pizza Restaurant talks about the pizza crust at their Providence, Rhode Island restaurant. And he says that when their crust explodes, the inside is pulley and chewy. He says there's a real magic pulley and chewy crust. And as a matter of fact, monkey bread. Are you familiar with monkey bread? Oh, very much. I do love it. Monkey bread is often called pulley bread.

As another name for it. Because you pull it apart and it has this characteristic that it separates beautifully. And this kind of physical characteristics of separating the pieces to eat is one of the joys of this tactile feeling that you get. All of these things together that I just read to you, these are all about, I think, related to what you were trying to get across by using that adjective pulley to describe bacon.

So, Jerome, is that how you eat the bacon? Do you put it between your teeth and then tug on it or what? There's no other way.

Right? Because it's a little rubbery, but in a good way. Yeah, that's just how I've heard my grandmother talk about it. And so I couldn't tell from there, like, is it a regional thing? Is it more of a rural thing? Is it a family thing? I couldn't, you know, narrow it. So I knew y'all people. So I'm glad to know I'm not too far off. No, this is how I would write the definition for this particular pulley is an adjective.

having a soft, yielding texture characterized by noticeable stretch or, quote, pull when handled or eaten. That sounds great. Let's put in the next edition of Merriam-Webster. I've never worked for Merriam, but I will email my colleagues there and ask if they'll include it. How about that? Perfect.

So, Jerome, you are legit. That's a legit word. And I hereby prescribed, what do you say, Martha? More bacon? I would prescribe going back to Reddit and telling those people that you were right and they were wrong. Hey, I did mention it in a little update to my post. After 30-something replies, I said, you know what? This sounds like a job for a way with words. So, and we got some good comments there. So, I will have to give them the update. And I got the stamp of approval.

Well, you take care of yourself and give us an update anytime somebody doubts your linguistic heritage. All right? Absolutely. Thank you so much. And yeah, more bacon, just not crispy. More poulet bread, too. All right. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Write down this number on a piece of paper and share it with everyone you know to talk to us about language. 877-929-9673. You can call or text toll-free 24 hours a day.

Stay put. We'll be right back to untangle the web of English.

You are 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 entering stage right, pursued by a bear, it's our quiz guy, John Chinesky. Whoa, it's a bear! It's a small bear, but a bear nonetheless. It's a tiny little bear. It's a tiny little teddy bear, but it's because it's tied to my ankle. That's why it's pursuing me. Today's quiz is pretty simple. I'll clue a two-word phrase in which both words end in "-y".

Why? Why not? One thing you should know is that none of the two-word phrases will rhyme. So hurdy-gurdy, roly-poly, none of those today. Got it? Got it. Okay, good. All right. Here we go. It's where my wife, Jennifer, and I spent a whole day last week participating in our civic obligation. Oh, jury duty. Yes. Oh, gotcha. Jury duty, yeah.

If you're looking for the closest galaxy, this is the one. It's not Andromeda or the pinwheel galaxy. In fact, you're soaking in it. The Milky Way. Milky Way, yes.

I like to think that if you chant this nickname of this former queen of England in Ireland three times while looking in a mirror, she will appear with a tomato juice cocktail for you. Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary. Watch it. Ah, he said it three times. Oh, no. Red rum, red rum, red rum. There's the cocktail. Look at that. That's nice. A little celery stick. Only those who aren't fans of spiders or snakes or lizards would use this term that describes two different modes of locomotion.

How about creepy crawly? Yes, creepy crawly. Very good. It costs $11.20 to take the New Jersey Turnpike from Trenton to Newark? Why, that's excessively exorbitant. It's thievery. Oh, we've talked about this term on the show before. It's really interesting. Highway robbery. Yes, highway robbery. Oh, I love a good callback. That's good. This term for a small crime, like shoplifting a candy bar, makes it sound like you've got a personal gripe against the shop owner.

A personal gripe against the shop owner. Yeah, don't be so... Petty. Petty thievery. Yeah, or petty... Or larceny. Either one is fine. Petty thievery, petty larceny. Yes, both of those end in Ys. Very good. It's what you need to study up on before you go to your new GP. They're going to ask you about it. So, did great-great-grandpa have any issues? Your family history? Yes, your family history.

You can find schools like this in Annapolis, Maryland, Colorado Springs, Colorado, and West Point, New York. Military Academy. Yes, Military Academy. The sentence, I'll have another authentic, always dreaming sovereignty, Majestic Prince, sounds fun, but it merely lists five winners of this annual competition. Kentucky Derby. Yes, Kentucky Derby.

And right now I'm going to go do something with that list. You guys were fantastic. I've got to go do some more puzzles. Oh, my bear. Take my bear. Come here. Come here, fuzzy. Come here, fuzzy. Thanks, John. We'll talk to you next week. See you then. Take care. Bye-bye. Bye, John.

And we'd certainly love to hear from you, 877-929-9673, or send all your thoughts about language to words at waywardradio.org. And you can reach us from anywhere in the world. Just go to our website, waywardradio.org slash contact. Hello, you have a way with words. Hello, hi. This is Harriet from Lakewood, New York. Well, welcome to the show, Harriet. What can we do for you?

Thank you. Well, I was brought up in Vermont and my mother was brought up in Massachusetts. And when I was growing up, she would always refer to our visiting friends that would come and stay or relatives as visiting firemen. And so I've used that expression my whole life. And when I moved here to Western New York, I was playing Mahjong with some of my girlfriends and I said, yeah, I've got visiting firemen coming because we were having a family reunion.

And they all looked at me with a quizzical look and went, this is firemen. I don't think firemen like afternoon tea. And I have a small tea room here. And I said, oh, no, no, they're not actually firemen. They're relatives that are coming to visit. And not one of them had ever heard that expression before.

So I was wondering if it's like a New England expression or a Vermont expression, or I'm not sure because nobody here has ever used it. In all my reference works, kind of don't agree on the definition of visiting firemen. Again, when we're talking about figurative meanings, not literal meanings. So some say that a visiting fireman is a famous, important guest or a visiting celebrity. Some just say they're tourists.

especially some that have lots of money to spend. Others say that a visiting fireman is just any rowdy group of people. Well, that would be the family. Especially those who come for conventions. And I guess that kind of fits the tourist who have a lot of money to spend definition. Another one says something about unofficial visitors who are made welcome. Another one says visitors who are...

who are well looked after or visitors who are kindred spirits. And I guess, so I guess in all of them, they all kind of have this overall theme of out of towners who, who are made welcome. So I guess it fits. Does any particular one of those fit more than the others for you? Yeah. That's a good question. It was always referred to as people coming in from out of town. Yeah. And usually was, uh,

we usually refer to our cousins and, you know, our relatives coming in as visiting firemen. Nice. Then I kind of have always used it just to mean people coming in from out of town. Like, that's how I used it when I was talking to my friends the other day. Hmm.

But with us, it certainly didn't mean money. I would say more kindred spirits, but I would think it's more the out-of-town. Yeah, in the historical record, it goes back at least 100 years. And what we find is there's kind of this turning point where you start to see...

firefighters as groups have this political power where they have money and unions and start to take elected offices outside of being firefighters. And so they have weight to throw around. And so they've got all this money as a body of people. And so they do things like have conventions around the country in the United States and Canada. And firefighters come from around the

North America or even the world, they're quite a sight. They're an active body of people and they tended to be young men with lots of energy and they required lots of entertainment. And I'm kind of euphemizing some of this here because they were, visiting firemen were a thing to behold, you know? Right. Well, it certainly would be if they showed up at my tea room. Yeah. So,

So that's why visiting firemen kind of became a shorthand for conventioneers who come to town and kind of put the whole place on tilt. So Harriet, it's not just you and your family. And I'm also wondering if there might be some firemen who would really enjoy coming to your tea room.

Of course they would. I'm sure because I have dress-up clothes all upstairs, and I would get them all dressed up in some bizarre outfit. Right? Oh, in case somebody's not dressed correctly, you have spares? Right. They have to take off their uniforms and put on something crazy that I have. So...

Yeah, they would have fun. Yeah, we want you to send us pictures if that ever happens. All right. Well, call us again sometime and enjoy yourself in the tea room, all right? All right. Okay, thanks so much. Bye-bye. Thanks, Harriet. Okay, bye-bye. Bye-bye. Well, if you're like Harriet and you used an expression and everybody looked at you like, what?

You might want to give us a call to talk about it. 877-929-9673 or send us an email about it. Words at waywardradio.org. Grant, you remember our conversation about how to pronounce the word spelled A-I-O-L-I? Yeah, that's the garlicky mayonnaise. Right. That you didn't pronounce, but...

But, yeah, I pronounce it A-O-L-E. A-O-L-E. A lot of people say it that way. Yeah. Well, that conversation reminded Vern Correa of San Diego about one that he had with a friend back in graduate school. He wrote to us and said, I rendered the word spelled G-R-I-M-A-C-E as grimace.

And Grant, I had no idea that you could pronounce it either of two ways.

So, grimace with the stress on the second syllable. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You know what makes it more difficult in the modern age is that when we look up pronunciations online, we kind of just accept any old pronunciation. But a lot of dictionaries indicate the stress on syllables with a straight up and down tick mark. It's kind of like an apostrophe without the curve. Yeah.

Some dictionaries put the tick mark before the stressed syllable, and some put it after the stressed syllable. And if you're not paying attention, you might not know which dictionary pronunciation you're looking at. So you might not really be clear.

What syllable is supposed to be stressed? So that's why you need the audio files. Just play the audio. Yeah, well, that's what I did. And I saw in the Oxford English Dictionary that in British English you say grimace, which really surprised me. I did not know that. You would think that they could become consistent, that dictionaries would be consistent about that tick mark.

There are so many dictionary traditions. Some of them have been around for hundreds of years, and it's hard for them to break their molds. But I do want to say, you could do what we do in my house. That is one of the words that we intentionally mispronounce.

So we say grimace, like it's Italian. Grimace. Or instead of saying no dice, meaning no luck or no chance, we say no dice. Oh, that's nice. But you'll have lots of dice, lots of luck if you give us a call with your mispronunciations, 877-929-9673.

Oh, you have a way with words. Hi, this is Ian calling from Cincinnati, Ohio. Hi, Ian. Welcome to the program. Occasionally, I will notice that certain words can lose letters sequentially and still stay valid words. Maybe this is from playing too much Scrabble. But, for example, you know, the word drama.

can lose an A and become dram, and then you lose the D and it becomes ram, and then am and

And then just the article, ah. I was just wondering if there's a name for words like that, that can lose letters and still be words. Well, Ian, have I got an organization for you. Do you know about the National Puzzlers League? I don't. Okay. Well, this is an organization of like-minded folks.

And they have a website where they have a lot of terms listed for the names of these kinds of word games. And so I have a couple of words for you. If it's removing the first letter, it's called beheadment. So like, for example, you know, you might take the word factor and take off the F and you still have a word, right? You still have actor, right?

And if you're removing it from the end of the word, that's called curtailment. So aspiring might become aspirin, for example. But you can't obviously take those words down to a single letter, but that's what the process is called. And if they're taken from either end, that's called transdeletions.

So I guess the point is that there are people who think the way you do, and they have terms for these. Fascinating. Beheadment and curtailment. Yes. And just to make it more complicated, sometimes other groups call them beheading or decapitation or aphorisis. And curtailment, it's also sometimes called apocopoeia.

And if you take off the first and the last letter at the same time, they're called terminal deletion. Wow. Fascinating. So, Martha, that National Puzzlers League website is at what? It's puzzlers.org. We'll link to it on our website. Do you have any other words, by the way, Ian, that work that way? You know, I tried to think of some other ones. The only one I've got is the word kinky.

Oh. So you get kink, then ink, then in and I. It seems to, depending on how you...

You know, play the game. Only words with A or I or maybe O if you consider the letter O to be a word of its own. Interesting. Yeah, that's one of the curiosities of English, isn't it? Yeah, the only one I can think of besides that is slate. You know, you can go, your flat would look like slate, late, ate, at, and A. Right.

But again, you're right. It's got an A and not an O. I have a few. Well, there's a kind of a beheadment or beheading called a teetotaler where it only involves word beginning with the letter T. But here's some words that you can play with. Triaspirate. A-S-P-I-R-A-T-E. It becomes spirate, which means to breathe out. Pirate.

Rate 8-T-E, which is an alternate spelling of T-E-E and other words. And then the letter E, which is the musical note. That's great. That's a big one. Well, scat, cat, and we'll talk to you another time, Ian. Yeah, do check out the National Puzzlers League. They're your people. I will definitely. Thank you very much, both of you. Yeah, take care of yourself. Thanks for calling. Okay, take care. Thanks. Bye-bye.

Hello, you have a way with words. Hi, this is Chrissy from Arlington, Virginia. Hey, Chrissy, we're glad to have you. What's up? I grew up playing a lot of cards, and the big favorite when the whole family got together was Bridge.

And every once in a while, when we would play, a trick would be ace, two, three, and four. And usually it's the same suit, but I don't think that mattered. And whenever this happened, my grandma Val, she would just kind of chuckle to herself and say, ace, two, three, four, kiss the dealer. Or sometimes she would just simply say, kiss the dealer.

it was funny there's no follow-on action no response required uh... she just simply that it no one can't anybody like it was just something that she would pay and uh... she such a special lady and she's been such a special lady in my life uh... she

passed away about three years ago at 105 years old. And I regret, I had plenty of opportunity to ask her and I regret never asking her more about it. And I was hoping you guys would have some insight on that phrase. I want to get to this saying, but I also want you to explain to those of us who don't play bridge what a trick is when you play bridge. Sure. A trick is basically every player, there's four people in the game. You have a teammate who sits across from you and every player plays

uh... contribute the single card from their hand into the center of the table and that would be the trick and the highest ranking card based on the rules usually at the highest of the suit uh... that was led or if it's a if you've identified the trump but the certain that that higher than all the rest the trump suit that one will win the trick if you win that trick you take those four cards you set them aside and that's going to help

You win the game ultimately. You want to take as many tricks as possible. Got you. That's a great explanation. Okay. Well, you might be delighted to know that this expression goes back at least to the 1800s. Well into the 1800s, there are variations in folklore from Kentucky and Cornwall and not just in bridge but in whist and other card games as well. And some of the variations say that they have to be played in order, right?

In order to kiss the dealer. And some of them are very specific that you actually do need to kiss the dealer. Yeah.

And some of them says that the person who takes the trick gets the kiss. And some of them says that everyone gets a kiss, which sounds exciting to me. So, you know, it can just be a chaste family kiss. It doesn't have to be anything erotic or anything like that. But really, I mean, you know, if you're sitting there with a bunch of friends or family and there's, you know, it's just another kind of one of those like goofs that you do. There's all kinds of ritual and, and,

memories and in jokes and stuff that comes up when you're sitting around the table with a bunch of people that you know really well, right? This can just be another part of that whole thing. Oh, that's wonderful. Chrissy, you are a delight. I really enjoyed speaking with you. I love your show and I share it with all my friends when I get an opportunity.

All right. Thank you so much. All right. Well, rock on. Be well. Take care of yourself. All right. You too. Bye. Thanks for calling. Well, you know what? Anytime, day or night, you can call us and leave a message or text us. 877-929-9673. Stay tuned for more from A Way With Words.

You're listening to A Way With Words, the show about language and how we use it. I'm Grant Barrett. And I'm Martha Barnett. And Grant, I just learned a really handy Swedish term. It's hemoblind. Hemoblind. Yeah, literally it means home blind. And it means that you're so accustomed to your home that you no longer notice its flaws. Oh, I know this word. I know the meaning of this word.

Yeah, it's cognate with English home blind. And, you know, it means like maybe company's coming and all of a sudden you realize that there are cobwebs up there or, you know, clutter around the house that you just didn't notice because you were hemoblined. Right. I took a trip with my family a few weeks ago. We went away for a few days and we came home and I'm like,

who's been here cluttering this place while we were away? And it was nobody. It was us before we left. All those things on flat surfaces, the books everywhere. We did that. Yeah.

We were hemoblind. Right. Isn't that a handy word? It totally is because you just get used to it. And then when you realize that your mother or your mother-in-law is coming to stay, suddenly you're like, wow, that's grimy. How long has it been like that? Right.

Right. Grant, I also want to tell you about where I learned this word. And I want you to hear me out because I learned it from a reality TV show. It's called The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning. And it's produced and narrated by Amy Poehler. And it's a

It involves these Swedish experts on decluttering your home, a professional organizer and a designer and a psychologist. And they come to Kansas City in over several episodes and they help various people declutter their lives.

And the series isn't about hoarders. It's about downsizing. It's about getting rid of stuff that you don't really need, and it's just sitting around your house. And ideally, of course, the idea of death cleaning has to do with not burdening your adult kids with having to deal with your stuff after you're gone.

But what's wonderful about this show is that it really makes you think about letting go of things you don't need, like dealing with that emotionally so that you can get reorganized and actually make the most of the rest of your life. And you've got to trust me here. It's a very smart show, a very inspiring one, and they declutter the homes of very appealing people. And unlike a lot of reality shows, it's actually got a lot of heart involved.

It sounds like a wonderful show. What's that Swedish word again, Martha? Hemmoblind. H-E-M-M-A-B-L-I-N-D. And the show itself is called? The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning. Oh, how nice is that? Well, we'll link to that show and those words from our website at waywardradio.org. And no matter how you learn words, where you learn them, or who you learn them from, we want to learn about them ourselves. And you can tell us about them toll-free by text or phone anytime.

877-929-9673 or find other ways to reach us no matter where you are in the world on our website at waywardradio.org. Hello, you have a way with words. Hi, Grant and Martha. This is Lee from Huntsville. More than once, anyway, in the past few years, I've had a specific miscommunication at the fast food drive-thru. Either my wife or I will order something and say, can I substitute coleslaw for the fries?

And then the answer we've gotten sometimes is it doesn't come with coleslaw. And we say, yes, we know it doesn't come with coleslaw. We want to know if we can have coleslaw instead of the fries. Are we using substitute in a weird way? I blame the drive-thru speakers, but it wasn't always at the drive-thru. Sometimes it was face-to-face. All right. Yeah, the problem here is this word substitute because...

The word means one thing and it's sort of changing in certain circumstances. The traditional formulation is substitute X for Y. Like you can substitute maple syrup for sugar in this recipe. That means put maple syrup in the recipe instead of sugar. Or you can substitute oil for butter, which means use oil instead of butter.

However, this word substitute is so tricky depending on the prepositional company it keeps. Because if you use the preposition with instead of for, then substitute increasingly can mean to replace someone or something with something else. For example, when I make this banana bread, I substitute the sugar with maple syrup.

That means I use maple syrup instead of sugar. Or how about this one?

we substituted the nice silverware with plastic utensils. That means we were going to use the nice silverware, but then we decided, what the heck, let's just use plastic. So, you know, more and more people are starting to use this second version of substitute. So I blame the word substitute. I think in cases like this, especially if you're in a fast food joint and people are trying to do things very quickly, you know, in a restaurant, you know,

context, it's best to just use different words. You know, does this come with coleslaw or can I have coleslaw instead of? Because just imagine if you're ordering a latte and you say, can I substitute regular milk for lactose-free milk?

You know, that means I want regular milk, not lactose-free. But if you said, can I substitute regular milk with lactose-free milk? Then you want the lactose-free milk and you really don't want the barista to make a mistake. Right. There's a bathroom problem later if that mistake is made. Yeah. Yeah. So I just, I have started...

avoiding the word substitute when I'm making orders. So Martha's on a real good path here, Lee, and I'm going to back everything she says. And somebody else is going to back it too. There's a linguist by the name of David Dennison who has studied the history of English in its really complicated forms. And he has a fantastic chapter in the book

called One Language, Two Grammars, Differences Between British and American English. And this chapter literally talks about this. This thing. Oh.

specifically the verb substitute and substitute x for y. And he talks about this change in what he calls argument structure. And he points out that this is a generational change happening in both the U.S. and the U.K. And it has happened before, but with this verb in French as far back as the 1500s.

So this verb to substitute is the problem, but not only in English, and it's been going on for 500 years. Well, I'm glad I'm in good company. Yeah. And in French, it swapped completely. It went from X for Y to Y for X. It swapped completely around. So we may see that happening in 500 years in English.

All right. That's a long time to wait. Yeah. Yeah. We'll get back to you in 500 years and let you know. Okay. Lee, thank you so much for your question about this. Take care of yourself and be well. All right. All right. Thank you both. All right. Bye-bye. All righty. Bye-bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

For some reason, I've been running into the word conclave a lot lately, and not just because of the selection of the new pope or the wonderful movie called Conclave. And I went and looked it up because I was curious about the origin of this word. And it goes back to two Latin words that mean together and key. Clavis is key in Latin, C-L-A-V-I-S.

And together, those words originally meant a room that can be locked up. And that's how the word came to mean a private meeting or secret assemblies that occur within a locked room.

And I realized that conclave is actually related to a lot of other words involving keys or closing up, like the word enclave, which comes from French enclave, which means to enclose. And then there are all these key words like clavier, which is a keyboard instrument, or clavicle, which is a bolt-like ball.

bone in your shoulder. And in antiquity, keys looked like that in ancient Greece. And the Latin word for key, clavis, also gave us via French the word clef, as in treble clef or bass clef. That's a symbol on a music staff that indicates pitch. It's a key to what notes you're going to play.

And then it's also related to the French borrowing in English, Romana Clay, which is a work of fiction with thinly veiled depictions of real-life people or events. Like, for example, The Devil Wears Prada. You know that it's about Anna Wintour and Condé Nast, even though they don't really say that.

And it's literally translated from the French, romaniclay, which means a novel with a key. All of those words are related, going back to Latin clavis. And that romaniclay ends with C-L-E-F, just you can't hear that F because of

of French, but it's there, right there. Correct. Yeah, novel with a key. For me, for some reason, it reminds me of something that I found out about when I moved to New York City 30-some-odd years ago and experienced the Irish bar lock-in, which is, even though you were supposed to close the bar because of the laws of the city, they would close the bar, but they would lock in the patrons. Right.

Oh, really? Yeah. So the bartender's like, I've got nowhere better to be. And he's like, I'd rather be here with you taking your money and your tips. So he would just technically close the bar, but the patrons were still inside. So I guess that was a conclave, huh? Yeah, a conclave of jinkers and pool players, I guess. Yeah.

877-929-9673. Hello, you have a way with words. Yes, hello. Hi, Jamie from San Diego. How are you? I'm doing well, Jamie. You're from San Diego, like us? Yes, I am. Yes, my mother was from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, born in 1922, you know, part of the greatest generation. And she

She had a lot of kind of unusual expressions that I don't normally hear. Now, I don't know if you are from that part of the country originally. You may recognize some of them if you've come to San Diego a little later. She had a lot of colorful expressions, and one of them was, oh, I'll eat my hat. So, for example, if this cake, you know, was made from scratch, I'll eat my hat, and

And I don't even know where made from scratch came from. I mean, that's probably something you've covered in a former episode. But yeah, she would say whenever something was sort of dubious, she would say, wow, if that's the way, you know, that is, I'll eat my hat because it just indicated she didn't believe it. Right. I'll eat my hat actually isn't regional. It's not particularly American. It's just kind of standard English. It's idiomatic. It goes back about 40,

Oh, 300 years, maybe more. And it literally is exactly how you phrased it, which is it's a thing that you'll say because you think that you'll never have to do it because you're so certain that you're right. Maybe you might say in the old days, you might say, I'll eat my boots or I'll eat my cap or I'll eat my bonnet.

Or in the more extended version, I'll eat my hat then swallow my boots. But basically, I am so positive I am correct. I swear I'll do this ridiculous thing if I'm wrong. Gosh, that goes a lot further if you're even going to eat your boots. I never heard that one. But we have a lot of these things that we say in English if we're pretty sure that we're right. Like we talk about eating humble pie or eating crow or eating our own words. And you know, in our

Other European languages, they also talk about eating their hat. So it's not even just English and French and Dutch, Italian and the Scandinavian languages and in Russian. It's literally the same exact thing, only in their own languages. I'll eat my hat. Right.

But in German, guess what they say? They say, I'll eat my broom. Not I'll eat it. Jamie, they say, I'll devour my broom or devour a broom. Oh, that's even less appetizing. In traditional Chinese, they'll say, if I'm wrong, I'll give you my head.

Oh, my goodness. Oh, my gosh. You know, eating your hat doesn't sound so bad after all. Oh, my goodness. I appreciate your knowledge. That's so interesting to hear a bigger expression of where it's all from, where it all originated. We appreciate your calling, Jamie. Yeah, take care of yourself. Don't eat no brooms. I sure won't be doing that. Bye-bye. Thank you so much. Bye-bye now. Bye. Bye-bye.

What's the word or phrase that you've been wondering about? We'd love to talk with you about it. 877-929-9673 is the number to call and leave us a message anytime. You can also text us at that number or you can email us words at waywardradio.org. Hello, you have a way with words. Hi, this is Linda calling from North Miami Beach, Florida. Hello.

Hello, Linda in North Miami Beach. Welcome to the show. Thank you. I was listening to a talk show the other day, and a man was describing his work environment. He said that he'd been given a challenging task that he'd found very frustrating, and he said he considered throwing in the towel. It turned out he didn't do that. After all, he completed the task. But it made me wonder about the origin of that phrase. Of throwing in the towel? Yes. Okay.

So I gather from what you said that you understood that to mean giving up

Would you use that expression, throw in the towel in that way? I think that is how I use it, yes. Yeah. Yes, it's a kind of confusing metaphor until you understand the history of this expression. Because back in the old days, when a boxer's team wanted to stop a fight because the guy was getting beaten up too much, they would take a towel and throw it into the ring or throw it up in the air and...

as a signal of surrender. And if you picture boxing back in the late 19th century, you know, it was a really noisy affair, unruly and really violent. And often the rings were not elevated. And so, you know, everybody was on the same level and throwing in a towel was a very picturesque way of letting everybody know that it was all over for this guy. And so, you know,

So they used the expression throw in the towel or chuck in the towel or sling in the towel. Sometimes they would talk about shoot in the towel. I'm going to shoot in the towel and get this guy out of the ring. But what's really interesting, Linda, is that it goes back to an even older expression that involves a sponge because before they threw in towels, they would throw in sponges. So the expression was throw up the sponge or chuck up.

up the sponge or fling up the sponge or toss in the sponge. All of those were a signal of defeat, a very visual signal that let everybody know over the noise and the unruliness that it was all over. How about that? It goes back to boxing.

That's interesting. That's interesting. And I have to say that my husband will be very happy because he told me that was the origin. And I argued and said, I thought there might be something more historic than that, that you would reveal. So this is a small victory for him.

And you're throwing in the towel. I am apparently throwing in the towel on this one. It's nice, but it's nice to have a bit of color to it. So often with these expressions, we don't know where they came from, but can you imagine just this bloody wet sponge flinging into the, into the ring? It's,

A moment ago, it was wiping the cut and bloody brow of a boxer, and now it's declaring defeat for that boxer. It's vivid. It's striking. Yeah, it's very vivid. It's quite dramatic, and I think now if I'm using it, I will think of the drama that's involved with it. Thank you so much for explaining that. Yeah, sure, and thank you so much for your call. We appreciate it. Take care of yourself. Hi to your husband. You too. Bye-bye. Yeah, thank you. Bye-bye.

You might have asked your spouse the origin of a word or expression and then doubted their answer. Well, we can help you judge for sure. Text or call 877-929-9673 or find a dozen other ways to reach us on our website at waywardradio.org.

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Michael Breslauer, Josh Eccles, Claire Grotting, Meryl Perlman, Bruce Rogo, Rick Seidenworm, and Betty Willis. Thanks for listening. I'm Grant Barrett. And I'm Martha Barnett. Until next time, goodbye. So long. ♪♪♪