Not My Circus (Rebroadcast) - 9 June 2025
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You can Venmo this, or you can Venmo that.

The Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp Bank, and a pursuant to license by MasterCard International Incorporated card may be used everywhere MasterCard is accepted. Venmo purchase restrictions apply. 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. I had the great good fortune recently to join some friends for a concert by the San Diego Symphony.

And what made this evening really special is that the concert was outdoors at the new Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, which is this spectacular new venue right there on San Diego Bay. And thanks to the Shell's design and the state-of-the-art acoustic system, the sound was also just stunning. In fact, Grant, the acoustics were so good that at intermission, we sought out the sound engineers to check out their board.

And the symphony's audio director was sitting there, and he had a score that he follows during the whole performance. And that's because he's responsible for creating what he called the cocktail effect. And so, of course, I got all excited to learn a new term, because when you're in a crowded setting and everybody's talking, you can still tune in to what somebody near you is saying because your brain lets you focus on the sound of that one person, and you filter out all the rest.

And I learned that people who work in the acoustics field call that phenomenon the cocktail effect or the cocktail party effect. And so that's what the sound engineers were doing that evening. They were letting us focus in, for example, if a violinist had a solo. So it was this splendid evening all around, just, you know, gorgeous sound and a summer night by the bay. And I learned a new term. Yeah, that's a

A well-spent evening, right? Beautiful music, beautiful scenery, and beautiful language. Yes. I figured you probably already knew that term. Yeah. I was all excited. Yeah. It's a good term, though. And the sound world is filled with language.

We get lots of email and phone calls from people who want to share, they're excited to share the language of their fields or their hobbies or something that they learned when they were out there working with professionals who do the same thing that they do, something that the old timers taught the newbies.

We'd like to hear that too. 877-929-9673. What's the lingo of your trade or hobby? Send it to us an email, words at waywardradio.org, or tell us and the world on Twitter at W-A-Y-W-O-R-D. Hello, you have a way with words. Hi, this is Paul McGreal calling. Well, hello, Paul. Where are you calling us from? I'm calling from Omaha, Nebraska. Hi, Paul. Welcome to the show. What's up? Thank you.

So, my son and I were watching the College World Series a little bit back, which is hosted here in Omaha, and the announcers at some point started referring to fastballs as cheese, saying that the pitcher was throwing cheese around.

And when we talked about it, we remembered that we'd actually heard that same word being used in a movie, Bull Durham, and being used in the same way. And so we're wondering where that came from, because we talked about it, and we said we knew we'd heard that, but we never really knew what the origin of it was. So that's our question. So in the World Series held there in Omaha, and it was the College World Series? Yep.

Yep, College World Series, exactly. Were they referring just to fastballs or any other type of pitches? From the context, it sounded like it was fastballs. Okay, and in Bull Durham, was it also fastballs? Yeah, and we took a look at something online, and we saw some people referring to, and we heard this too in the...

in the show, from the announcers, like hard cheese or high cheese. And it seemed like, at least as we were observing it, each time they were referring to the fastball, exactly. That sounds about right. The classic work of baseball terms to look this stuff up in is Paul Dixon's Baseball Dictionary. I had the good fortune to make small contributions to that book some years ago.

And Paul has done a really good job of mustering a lot of resources to take these terms back as far as he can. And he's got this term in there, and he talks about it probably being related to the expression, the big cheese, because there is a word that is roughly pronounced as cheese in Farsi, Urdu, and Hindi that roughly means...

How should I put this? A thing, item, thing. And it migrated into British English as the best thing of its kind in the early 1800s. And that's how it stuck in English and kind of lay there as a slang term for a long time and showed up in a variety of different ways. And here we have it today as leftover as the big cheese and then in baseball as the cheese bag.

As early as about 110 years ago, you can find it in sports columns in U.S. newspapers. Oh, wow. Yeah, they talk about it being the cheese. But what's interesting in the early uses, they often talk about it being pitchers not just throwing –

but trying to get away with something, like trying to pitch to the outside of the box because they know their particular umpire is less likely to call a strike or another umpire might call a strike for that same exact pitch. So it's not just fastballs, but fastballs with clever pitching.

One quote I see from a 1923 newspaper is, the cheese pitcher is the lad who is always working in the corners and trying to kid the umps out of giving him the edge. It's really interesting. There's a little bit of gradual transition on that term. So that's what Paul Dixon believes, and I think Paul is right on this, that the cheese in baseball ultimately goes back through hundreds of years to this term borrowed from baseball

Farsi, Urdu, and Hindi meaning thing, and it arrived in English as the big thing or the main thing, the best thing. Oh, okay. And so is it saying something about the pitcher themselves being a big cheese or something like that for being able to throw it? Well, I think what happened was it kind of became conflated with stuff because stuff is used often in the same way, right? They talk about a pitcher's stuff.

Right.

And so would it be almost redundant to say someone has hard cheese or something like that, given that there's already an implication that it has something special to it? Yeah, that's kind of what I'm saying here. It sounds like it's moved on. It sounds like in the beginning cheese was automatically positive, and it sounds like over the years it kind of just became their pitching in general. So now it does require the adjective or some kind of—

embellishment to kind of say what kind of cheese it is. I can really imagine sports writers and announcers embellishing, as you said, Grant, and doing all kinds of variations. Oh man, that was stinky cheese. Paul, thank you so much for calling. We appreciate it. Yeah, and thank you for answering the question. That was great. It was a lot of fun. Thank you. Take care. Bye-bye. You too. Bye.

That dictionary again is Paul Dixon's Baseball Dictionary. It's not often that you find a work that is so thorough for a particular field, but this one really does the job.

It's a great browsing dictionary, even if you're not into baseball. And if somebody in your life is into baseball, it's a fantastic gift. 877-929-9673 or talk to us on Twitter at W-A-Y-W-O-R-D. And if you've missed part of this episode or past episodes, you can find them at waywardradio.org.

Hello, you have a way with words. Hi, this is Piper. I'm from Reno, Nevada. And I'm calling about a question for movie trailers. And why do...

Yeah, that's a good question. So you're sitting in the movie wondering if you're watching everything backward. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, like you don't push a trailer, you pull it. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Well, Piper, that is an excellent question, and a lot of adults have wondered that same thing because, as you said, a trailer goes behind a vehicle, right? So why would the movie trailer be up at the top of the show? Exactly. Well, there's some history behind that that's really interesting. Do you usually watch movies at home, or do you go to a theater? Usually at home. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. And it wasn't always like that. In the early 20th century, you know, you didn't have HBO or Netflix or anything like that. And so you would have to actually go to the movie theater. And this was a big...

a big deal back in those days, Piper. I mean, you would go and you would watch, say, at least two films. You would pay your ticket and you could go in and you could see a double feature. So that would mean that they would see one movie and then after the movie there would be like a little preview of coming attractions and then they would show the second movie.

The preview of coming attractions in between those movies followed the first movie. It trailed the first movie. And that's why it started to become called a trailer. And then after people figured out that, wow, maybe we better put the preview of coming attractions at the beginning of the movie, then they started doing that because, you know, maybe people left before the second movie. So they started putting it at the beginning of attractions.

the first film, but they still called it a trailer. That name just hung on.

It was like a little fossil or something, you know? Yeah. One interesting thing is that the trailer name stuck for about 100 years. They switched from the end of the movie to the beginning very quickly after movies were invented. So by the 1920s, they were already moved mostly to the beginning of pictures and not exclusively at the end. But they were called trailers. So the name...

The name has kind of been weirdly inaccurate for a long time. Oh. So, Piper, what's the last good movie you saw? What do you recommend to us? I would say it's a really new movie called Luca. Luca, uh-huh. It's about this fish guy who goes on to land and then tries to win this huge race.

That's right. He's a big bicycling fan, right? Yeah. And his parents don't want him to go ashore because when he goes ashore, he turns human. He's no longer a fish. Yeah, exactly. We watched it. It was very good. Is this the one that happens in Italy? Yeah. And there's a lot of pasta involved? Yeah. Yeah.

And there's a lot of Italian in the film, which is a good language thing. Cool. Well, Piper, thank you for that question and that recommendation. You're welcome. And thank you for letting me be on your show. Absolutely. Do you listen every week? Yes, I do. Excellent. Well, call us again sometime. Take care. Okay. All right. You too. Take care. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye.

We love questions from listeners of all ages, so call us with yours, 877-929-9673, or send it to us in email. The address is words at waywardradio.org, and if you just can't wait, hit us up on Twitter. We're at WayWord. Steve Ekren in Simi Valley, California says...

My family has always referred to the containers of grated Parmesan cheese, typically used for topping spaghetti, as shaky cheese. An example would be me asking my child, do you want some shaky cheese on your noodles? And he wonders if anybody else uses this term. As a matter of fact, they do. That is an incredibly common term for it. And I think we've talked about this on the show, and I mentioned that my family uses scrapey cheese.

to talk about the block of Parmesan Reggiano that you scrape over your pasta. And other families apparently do the same thing that we do. So there's shaky cheese and scrappy cheese. And these are fairly commonly coined individually by families all across the English-speaking world. Share your family words with us. Words at waywardradio.org or find us on Twitter at WayWord.

This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. From streaming to shopping, Prime helps you get more out of your passions. So whether you're a fan of true crime or prefer a nail-biting novel from time to time, with services like Prime Video, Amazon Music, and fast, free delivery, Prime makes it easy to get more out of whatever you're into or getting into. Visit Amazon.com slash Prime to learn more.

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 joining us now is that international man of mysteries wrapped in enigmas, John Chinesky. Hi, Martha. Hi, Grant. I've been to at least two countries, so yes, it does count as international.

Hello Canada. Anyway, short anagrams today is the title of our quiz. You know anagrams are a staple of wordplay, but we don't do them much here because they're not always easy to do in your head. But we're gonna try some simple short anagrams and we're gonna add hints. I'll give you a sentence. That sentence will contain a short word that anagrams to another word. Also in that sentence will be another word that defines the answer. For example:

I can get no research done because the room is so dusty. The definition is research, and the anagram word is dusty, which anagrams to? Study. Study, yes. Research, study. Dusty is study. That's the anagram. Okay, let's give it a shot. We sat around the fire and wept into our mugs of hot cider. That's mug. Hot.

Sounds like cider is the key word. Yeah. It's got to be something. And is it a synonym for wept? Yes. Like cried. Yes. Cried is the anagram of cider and the definition is the word wept. Nicely done. This summer, I want to sample the grits in every southern state.

Taste and sample. Yes, exactly. State anagrams to taste, and it's synonymous for sample. Nicely done. A dark, hairy thing crept out of the closet. Oh, night. Thing anagrams to night, which is synonymous for dark. Oh, good one. For dark, yes. That was the tricky part, was the definition. Here we go. I'm going to toss this poem because it's not worth my time. Hmm. You're not going to emit it. No. We're not anagramming this. No. No.

Are you moping? No, not an anagramming poem either. Oh, oh, oh. Yes. I love that sound. Worth anagrams to throw. Right. And it's defined by the word? Toss. Toss. Yes. Very good. For what I paid, I found the dinner options rather lame.

Meal. Dinner. Yeah, laying manograms to meal, which is a synonym for dinner. Yes, very good. Nicely done. All right. You guys did fantastic. That's a workout. Thank you, John. That was a mind-bender for sure. I appreciate the workout every time.

Every week. Take care, guys. Thanks so much. Whether you're into word games or slang or new words or the jargon you use at work or some new bit of language that you read in a book, we'd love to talk about it. 877-929-9673. Email words at waywardradio.org. Or let's start a conversation on Twitter at W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

Hi there, you have a way with words. Hi Martha, my name is Mia and I'm calling from Iowa City. How are you today? Hey Mia, I'm doing great. We're glad to have you. What's up? There is a word that I don't understand and I'll just go right to it. It is the word bummed.

or bummer or bummed out. So if something goes wrong, you're bummed like that? Well, I could give a little bit more context. Grant, that's correct. So my fiance is a little bit older than me, and he's from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and I come from the Midwest. And frequently, when something isn't going his way, he'll say that he's bummed out or super bummed. And potentially, I'm a little bit too concerned about his well-being

And I think that something is really, really wrong when he says that he's super bummed. But then he backs down and he says, no, no, no, it's just, it's like slightly, like slightly annoying or slightly uncomfortable where to me, if I were to say, gosh, I'm so bummed out or super bummed out, that would be a big deal. So I'm not quite sure what bummed or

or bummed out means. I don't know where the word comes from. And he and I can't agree upon the meaning or the correct usage of these words. So can you help me out? So it's a matter of degrees, a difference of opinion on how exactly, how negative a situation of being bummed out is. That's it. You've nailed the problem that I'm running into. Well, you explained it well, Mia.

Martha, what do you think? If I came to you and said, oh, I'm so bummed about the way this happened, what would you think? Would you think that it was irreversible or terrible or that we really needed to, I don't know, call in the producer or call in the police?

You know, I think it depends on how you present it. If you said, I am so bummed, that's going to be different from I'm so bummed. Yeah. Yeah. So if I just said bummer and then moved on, then you would know that it wasn't a big deal. Yeah. Context, of course, always matters, Mia. And I wonder if it's just that you are a really sensitive individual and your love for him is what's really...

coming into play here, that your sensitivity to his feelings because he's someone that you care for is really having a lot of influence on your reading of this because you don't obviously want him to be in a terrible situation that needs fixing. But in general, my understanding of being bummed is that it's not like being aggravated. It's a little milder than being

Aggravated. Oh, I'm going to get a lot of email about that, aren't I? Well, it's certainly not devastated. Yeah, devastated. That's a better word. Yeah. Oh, I'm so devastated. Yeah, bummed. I mean, you can be bummed about all kinds of little things, right? Yeah.

Yeah, you could be bummed about not getting tickets for a baseball game that you want to go to, or you could be bummed about missing your chance to see a friend who was in town, but you just couldn't make it work. But you could also be bummed about your food arriving from a restaurant that you really love, and it's all over the inside of the bag, and it's inedible. Yeah, I think that's a good bummed example.

So Mia, thank you so much for making us look a little more closely at this word. I never really thought about it before. You know what? This helps us so much. And this conversation was definitely not a bummer. So thank you so much for your time today. Thank you. And you don't sound like a bummer at all either, Mia. Give our best to your guy. All right. Yeah. Thanks so much. Take care. Bye-bye. Thanks. Bye-bye. Bye. Of course, I didn't even mention bum idea, bum leg, bum deal. These are all the same bum. They're all as

Bum is just a broken or incorrect or faulty or fake word.

version of the thing. Yeah. And the more I think about it, the more mild it seems, you know? I mean, if you talk about a bum leg, it's sort of like you're resigned to having it, you know? It's just this chronic condition that I have. It's my bum leg. It's not like this devastating injury to my leg. It's just kind of a condition. Yeah. And a bum deal is usually something, that's not something that wipes you out. It's usually something like

Maybe it's something that you've moved on from or that you could back out of. And a bum idea is usually one that you've discarded and not one that you're stuck with. Well, we'd love to know your opinion. So give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send it to us an email. That address is words at waywardradio.org. Thank you.

Here's a handy word that I didn't know until the other day. Fastuous. F-A-S-T-U-O-U-S. Fastuous. Fast. It's not related to the word fast, is it? Meaning speedy? No, it's related to the Latin word fastuosus. Something that holds on tightly? Like holding fast to a branch? The chameleon held fast to the branch? Excellent guess, but no. No. What is it?

Fastuosus in Latin means proud or haughty. And so somebody who's fastuous is characterized by excessive pride, vanity, or self-importance. Or something that's fastuous is characterized by an ostentatious show of wealth. I love that. Fastuous and fastuosity is the noun form of that. Nice. Call us with your language question, 877-929-9673.

Hello, you have a way with words. Hi, this is Robert Elder calling from Oak Park, Illinois. Hi, Robert. Welcome to the show. So I was wondering, so when I was in college at the University of Oregon, a Brazilian friend of mine told me about a phrase that I've never forgotten. And in essence, it's what men would say when they saw a woman who was so beautiful, they thought that they didn't stand a chance with her.

And I've lost the original Portuguese, but the translation is, she is too much sand for my little truck. And, you know, this is a more memorable version of she's out of my league. But it made me think, you know, are there other variations of this kind of expression in other languages? Do you know the Portuguese? So it's she is too much sand for my little truck.

Do you know the Portuguese version? You know, I lost it. And actually, years ago, I asked Mark Sandman, who was a lead singer for the band Morphine, what it was because he was a cab driver in Brazil. But I've since even lost that. So I'm hoping you guys know what it is. And again, if there are other variations. It's such a sad phrase, isn't it? She's too much sand for my little truck.

It is, but it's far more descriptive than she's out of my league, you know. Right, right. And in Brazilian Portuguese, it's something like, ela é muita areia pro meu caminhãozinho. It's, yeah, she's too much sand for my little truck, which is, I don't know.

I don't know. It's just so sad, you know, I was talking about inability to attain the impossible. But we love your question, Robert, because there are lots of different phrases that...

I think this is my favorite of all of them, Grant. Oh, it's so colorful. And I understand that it's a little different in European Portuguese. Like you might also use it there for something that's too expensive, perhaps a car that's out of your budget, or even a job that is beyond your capabilities or a business proposal that is too big for your company to accept. Too much sand for your little truck. Yeah.

Sometimes you can just say too much sand for my truck without the little. Yeah, yeah, camiño. But there are lots of different phrases that convey that same idea. There's one in Spanish that suggests that they don't even come up to the bottoms of their, the soles of their shoes often.

or they don't even come up to their heels. Ni a las talones. And, you know, there's some of these that are kind of naughty in Polish. There's one that goes, the sausage is not for the dog, which is...

Or the soul wants to get into heaven. And you can swap out a word there and make it sound really naughty. But Grant, I know you're a fan of these as well. But you know, you mentioned something about not coming up to the heels. In a lot of European languages, including French, Hebrew, Czech, and German, there is something about not reaching your ankles. In French, it's loin de lui arriver à la cheville.

But in German, there's also "nicht das Wasser reichen können." They can't reach the water. Basically, the equivalent of the English "not good enough to carry someone's water." It's nice to know that low self-esteem is universal. Yeah.

Yeah, but I do think of all of these, the Brazilian one is my favorite. I had never heard other variations before, and it's such a specific thing. It's not just low self-esteem. It's that you don't have a chance. My brother used to have one with his friends that was similar, which was, we look good, but we ain't got no game. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Thank you. This was a great call, Robert, and this is a great expression. I'm sure this is going to make it into English now, and you've done the job. Oh, thank you so much. All right. Take care now. Be well. Thanks for calling. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

We love those phrases from other languages. Did you learn them from a taxi driver? Did you hear them from a band member? Was it something you learned when you were traveling or you grew up with? 877-929-9673. Or tell those phrases that speak to your heart in other languages to us in email, words at waywardradio.org. Hello.

Hello there. You have a way with words. Good morning. This is Gail, Gail Roberts. I'm calling from Potrero, way down south, down near the border. San Diego County. Well, welcome to the show, Gail. Yes. What can we do for you? Well, I'm aware that language sort of changes and adapts from time to time, but what I have been noticing recently is we seem to be losing the past tense of verbs.

The most common one I hear is I could have went instead of gone. People are saying went, and I hear that quite a lot. There's another one where I saw some, this was written in a novel, where it said about a ship had sunken instead of sank. And then another one was I was sat instead of seated.

And then another, it's not quite the same, but another one where I've heard several people say this. I was drugged instead of dragged. He was drugged across the car park instead of dragged. And I'm wondering what this is about, what's happening. Oh, that's a very full, rich question with lots of possibilities. There's so much to say because it's...

Each of those is its own special circumstance. We have talked, for example, about the I was sat or I was sitting on the show before. And that is a change that is currently underway in British English where saying I was sat is now becoming more of the norm instead of saying I was sitting or I was seated. Okay. What was the first one you said? I have went...

Yes, people could have went instead of saying, I could have gone or I would have gone. Yeah, that one rings as false to most native speakers' ears, except that you will often hear it. I don't have a lot of data on that, but I know that some linguists are tracking that and we're looking to see if that's undergoing a transformation. But what we do generally see is that there are a lot of verbs in English that

If there's a past participle form that is non-standard, sometimes it also shows up in the past form.

What's a really good example? We have shook and shaken. I was shook or I was shaken. Which one sounds more correct to you if I was talking about something that happened yesterday? I would say I was shaken. I was shaken. Yet to the modern ear, a lot of people would say that they can be either one. I was shook or I was shaken, that either one of these can serve the purpose. So what we're seeing is a kind of a

a collision or a condensation or a collapsing of the past tense and the past participle. What you've noticed, Gail, because you're an observer of language, an observant observer of language, is an ongoing change that's been going for centuries in English. And we're in the middle of it. And we don't know where it's going to end up, but we will know in three or four hundred years.

So stay tuned. Oh, that's a long time for me to hang around. You may see that those past tense forms and those past participle forms ultimately become the same. It does look like that's where we're headed. And this kind of simplification has happened in English before.

There are a few cases where sneaked and snuck, for example, where we get new past participle forms. But for the most part, they seem to be collapsing and reducing. Okay. Well, that's fascinating. Thank you so much. I appreciate your interest. So, Gail, we hope we've shined a light on the answer. Definitely. Yes. Thank you so much. And I have to tell you, you're the high spot of my weekend. I do enjoy your program every weekend.

Oh, bless your heart. All right, Gail. Thank you. Bye-bye. 877-929-9673. In German, if somebody asks you how you are and you're feeling great, you can say alles in Butter, which means everything is in butter. It means you're feeling terrific. And the idea is supposedly that back in the old days, German restaurant owners would advertise that their kitchen only

used the most expensive type of fat, which was butter. So alles in butter. Alles in butter. Everything is in butter. Oh, danke schön. That's very nice, Martha. Bitte. 877-929-9673. Email words at waywardradio.org. More about what we say and why we say it. Stick around for more. Music

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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. Last week I was having some knee pain, enough that I went to my doctor's office, and the physician's assistant there examined my leg and did some squeezing and manipulating, and he said that I had an inflammation of the bursa on the inside of my knee, just below the joint.

And he explained that a bursa is a fluid-filled sack that acts as a cushion there in the joint. And so I was thinking, cool, the word bursa is the Latin word for purse. And we get the word bursar from that, somebody who controls the purse strings at a college. And we also get the word reimburse from the Latin word for purse, you know, where you're putting money back in somebody's purse.

And then he said that that bursa specifically was called the Pace Anserenus. And I'm thinking, wait, Pace Anserenus? But that's the Latin for goose foot. You're telling me I have a goose foot in my knee? And he said, oh, I don't know. You know, that's just what they taught us in medical school. That's just what we memorized. And I'm thinking, no, that means goose foot. Why do I have a goose foot in my knee?

Because the Latin word pes, P-E-S, means foot. And the genitive of that, pedis, gives us pedestrian and pedal. And then I was thinking about the word anserinus because in Latin, anserinus means goose-like. And in English, the word anserin means silly or stupid as a goose. Like you would say, you know, he engaged in anserin behavior.

But I was wondering why goosefoot, and I got home, and I started reading about this, of course, and I learned that the tendons of three different leg muscles attach to the shin bone over this bursa, and they spread out in three directions from that spot, so they look sort of like a goosefoot. So that's why my bursa is called the Pace anserinus. And then...

I started thinking about other words involving goose feet because in German there's the word Gänsefüßchen, which literally means little goose feet, and it's a term for quotation marks. Gänsefüßchen.

And then, Grant, there's one more word in English that has a bird foot in it. Any ideas what that is? One more word in English that has the bird foot in it? Mm-hmm. Not a goose foot, but a different bird foot. A different bird foot. Mm-hmm. And it comes from French. Pied-à-terre. Magpie. Magpie.

I don't know. What is it? Well, the French word for foot, as you noted, is pied. And in French, the word for a crane, you know, that long-legged bird, is a grue. So pied de grue gave us the word pedigree from the shape made by the forked lines of a genealogical chart. So I went from Bursa to Pace Ansarinas to pedigree, ultimately, and

I had so much fun, I forgot my knee hurt. I thought that's where you were headed. Yeah, I'm sitting here, my mind is swirling with all these connections, and I'm still thinking about purse. Purse, the word purse itself, is from the word bursa. The B became a

in English when it came over from French. And in French, bourse means a stock exchange. That's what they use for the Paris Stock Exchange. B-O-U-R-S-E. That's the Paris Stock Exchange. So it's like a giant purse. It's full of money.

This is why sometimes Grant and I are just sitting there staring into space. This is how our brains work. We're like twins. We have a secret language. We just twitch an eyebrow. The other one's like, yes, I get it. I agree. We're joined at the brainstem. Yeah.

There are these secret paths and strange stories in pretty much any language. Whether your question is about English or another language, let us know, 877-929-9673. Or email us, words at waywardradio.org. Hello, you have a way with words. Hi, this is Randall Reeve calling from Baltimore, Maryland.

Hi, Randall. Welcome to the show. What's up? Thank you. I've been curious about a sort of phenomenon I've recognized, which is that some individuals will pronounce the same word, spelled the same way, in different pronunciations. So I'll give you one example that I hear a lot, which is the word could be pronounced innovative.

and sometimes innovative. So I understand, obviously, the different British and American pronunciations, but I noticed that the same person will do it in different ways on different occasions. And I was wondering, what's the origin of that? Is this a particular person you have in mind? Is it yourself? Well, many of my colleagues will sometimes pronounce it depending on maybe how they use it in the sentence.

Sometimes they'll pronounce it, they'll say this is a very innovative project, and sometimes they will pronounce it as innovative, like, gee, Martha, your solution to that problem was very innovative. And I was just wondering whether that's a common phenomenon or...

What its origins may be. I notice it happens often with words that are sort of trending, like impactful and impactful, that are sort of trending words and maybe people hear it.

in other people's conversations and try and incorporate it into their own with a different enunciation. You know, Randall, it's interesting that you mention this because I'm thinking about the way that I talk, and I do find myself doing that kind of thing from time to time. I'm around a lot of younger people who talk about experiments and

where I grew up saying experiment, and I find myself being influenced by them, and sometimes I say experiment. And I also have friends who say forward and others who say forward, and I find myself going back and forth between those two pronunciations, one with the R and one without the R. Yeah, it's incredibly common, Randall, especially in a collaborative environment where people come from a variety of different backgrounds,

and where you might be consuming a lot of different media, or perhaps going to conferences or having conference calls with other professionals in the field from other universities or other companies or even other continents where they speak a different variety of English or even English that's not their first or even third or fifth language.

And so you're going to get a lot of different nuance here, and each of us will develop our own idiolect. With innovative or innovative, as you mentioned, there is the U.S.-U.K. divide. Americans tend to say innovative. The people in the U.K. tend to say innovative. But what you often find, if someone does vary their pronunciation, they might have one pronunciation where they use the adjective before it,

a noun, say innovative solution, and they might have a different one if it comes after a verb. So that is innovative.

Something like that. And might it have to do also with the words that surround those words? I mean, innovative project might be something that you hear at conferences, like Grant said, talking about something else that's innovative, like, I don't know, a product or an idea around the house might, because you learn these phrases as phrases, right?

Yeah, it's called lexicalization or idiomatization, where two or more words start to behave as a unit. They start to become a team. So, for example, if you went to a conference and everyone was saying...

innovative, um, automatic car assembly. And they always said innovative car assembly. Anytime you say innovative car assembly, you're always going to say innovative car assembly and not innovative because that's how you heard it for three days at a conference in Seattle or wherever you happen to be.

Because that's now a unit. Those three words said that way. And this is how language behaves. Even well up into our 80s, we are constantly adding new words and new pronunciations and adopting the sounds and language of the people around us. And those inconsistencies are perfectly normal.

And even a single word can have two or more pronunciations depending on our environment, who we're with, one pronunciation at home, one pronunciation at work, formal, informal, you know, whether it's an adjective before a noun or adjective after a verb and so forth.

This all makes perfect sense. I'm actually a university professor, so many of the occasions I'm thinking of and my colleagues, sometimes they're British and sometimes a whole mix of people from all over the country. And you'll

often hear individuals who are struggling to remember what is the pronunciation they should use in that particular scenario. So, for example, talking about an innovative project, you can almost hear them trying to remember to say it as innovative.

That's very good. Try to pay attention to the content and give them a break on their pronunciation and do the same for yourself, Randall. And I say this to everyone else, too. Give yourself a break when something doesn't come out right, and they'll feel a lot better when you give a presentation. That's absolutely helpful. Yes, I'll go back to my innovative.

All right. Take care now. Sounds good. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Randall. What's been on your mind but you've been a little embarrassed to ask? Well, our phone line is open, 877-929-9673. Or tell us the embarrassing details. They're probably not as bad as you think. And email to words at waywardradio.org. Or if you don't mind at all, share the embarrassing language thought on Twitter at W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

A while back, we were discussing bedroom furniture and how taken together, that furniture can be called either a bedroom suite or a bedroom suit. You remember that conversation, Grant? Right. And that surprised a lot of people because they'd only ever heard suite and they thought suit was automatically wrong.

Well, funny you should mention that because that prompted an email about bedroom suit versus bedroom suite from Judith Moore D'Amico, who lives in Glen Rose, Texas. And Judith writes, this nearly caused a hiccup in the relationship between me and my fiancé.

I called him and told him I had found a really good deal on a bedroom suit for only $600. There was a long silence, followed by a rather timid, was that a good deal?

The poor man was from Pittsburgh, PA, and thought I was not only spending $600 on a nightgown, but also thought that was a good deal. Well, he wasn't sure. Poor guy, what am I getting into? The $600 bedroom suit better come with champagne and strawberries. Yeah.

And a masseuse. And rose petals. And a hotel room in Hawaii.

Call us about your family misunderstandings, 877-929-9673, or send them an email. The address is words at waywardradio.org. Hello, you have a way with words. Hi there. I'm Charlie Lutz from Lexington, Kentucky. Hey, Charlie. Welcome to the show. What's up? Well, Grant, I'm an old guy, but I'm also a newlywed, and my wonderful...

Amazing wife who is from eastern Kentucky used an expression that was entirely new to me. Well, I'm now 68 years old, so I've been around a while, but I hadn't heard this one. As her way of saying that something is no longer her responsibility, such as when she retired, all that work stuff was no longer her responsibility, her phrase was, not my circus job.

Not my monkeys. Which I thought was just, well, it delighted me anyway. And Charlie, what exactly did she mean by that? Not my circus, not my monkeys.

That's no longer my responsibility. I don't have to worry about all that stuff. That's in somebody else's hands now. It doesn't necessarily mean, you know, I hope they fail or I hope they succeed or anything. It just means it's not my responsibility. Yeah, that's a great phrase. Where is she from in eastern Kentucky? I have to ask. She grew up in Ashland.

And her people come from Pennsylvania and West Virginia. And I don't know exactly when they came into Kentucky, maybe a long time ago. But at any rate, Pennsylvania and West Virginia were the kind of precursor locations.

Okay. And she never told you where she learned that? No, she didn't. She didn't know. She just said it wasn't original to her, but she didn't recall where she had learned that. But given that...

I've never heard that before. I'm thinking it's kind of particular. Well, the reason that I was asking about Polish is that apparently it comes from a Polish saying that is the same idea, not my circus, not my monkeys. Grant, do you want to give that Polish a crack? I apologize to the Polish-speaking people of the world, but it's something like, Something like that. Something like that. Yeah.

Yeah, that's actually very good. And it means not my circus, not my monkeys with exactly that sense. You know, this mess doesn't have anything to do with me, but I know what you're talking about. And there are different variations of this, not my circus, not my monkeys, but the clowns definitely know me. Some people add that little, but the clowns definitely. That's great.

That makes it even better. Yeah. Yeah. Your wife might appreciate that. Yeah. I've heard other examples of this, like not my money, not my business. My favorite is not my pig, not my farm. I've actually adopted that one. Not my pig, not my farm. Just, you know, you wash your hands of it. You just walk away from it.

As far as we know, it's reflected in Polish. It's been around for at least a couple of decades in Polish, and we seem to have picked it up. Yeah, at least three decades. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, so it might have originated this century, or I mean the late 20th century. Yeah. Language researchers, and me included, have tried to trace this back in Polish further than the early 90s, and we haven't been able to find it in print earlier than 91. Now, it certainly could be older than that, but we just haven't found the evidence yet. Cool. Cool.

And it's what linguists call a calc. It's a borrowing that's a word-by-word translation of the exact Polish. Not my circus, not my monkeys. And then something happened in 2014, Martha. Suddenly, the whole internet was...

was alive with people passing this phrase around and t-shirts were being made and screenshots and motivational signage and all kinds of snarky stuff on every social media platform where just exploded in popularity i'm not sure why but um just in 2014 it just became huge in english

So, Charlie, that could be a good gift for your new wife, you know, a T-shirt or a mug with that on it. You can find them on the Internet. Okay, and the last part is, but I know the clowns. Yeah, not my circus, not my monkeys, but the clowns definitely know me. Oh, the clowns know me. Okay, the clowns know me. Okay.

Interesting. Well, in my opinion, that makes it even better. Yeah, try that one out on her. Charlie, thank you so much for calling. Take care now. Yeah, fun to talk to you. Bye-bye. Best to your wife. Well, do you have a variation on Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys? Or maybe you have another phrase you're curious about. Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send it to us in email. That address is words at waywardradio.org.

My new favorite expression that I learned from the Dictionary of Southern Appalachian English is, in all my put-togethers. And that means in all of my experience. I never saw anything like that, in all my put-togethers. Oh, yeah. That's a good one. That's going in the permanent lexicon. Not just your experience, but everything that you figured out from your experience. Yes, yes.

Yes, in all my put-togethers. 877-929-9673.

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.com.

at waywardradio.org. A Way 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.