Smack Dab - 24 February 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 we received an email from Michael Feeney in Las Vegas, Nevada. He was telling us about a term that his youngest sister made up one year around Christmas time. His mother was wrapping lots of presents, and as she used up the wrapping paper, she would discard each of the empty rolls. And Michael writes...

We five children would grab the cardboard tubes and run around bopping each other on the head for kicks. The youngest one didn't have a lot of words yet, but started yelling the word, when she saw one.

And he says, I assume that that's defined as the sound made by a hollow cardboard tube when it bounces off of somebody's head. We all adopted that word and used it with our children. Have you all ever heard this term? Or can my sister claim its invention? I hereby christen the term Marcha Parcha as belonging to your sister. Congratulations to Michael's sister.

But Martha, over the years, how many emails and phone calls have we received where families come up with names either for the empty cardboard tube, for paper towels or wrapping paper or toilet paper, or the sound that they make? Yeah, yeah. Remember the guy who called us and he said that his family called empty toilet paper rolls Oa Oas because they would use them for kazoos, you know, that you throw around? Yeah.

And apparently empty toilet paper rolls are really inspiring because there are all these different names that families have specifically for that thing, like Drit Drit and Da Da and Hoo Hoo. Because if you're not banging people on the head with them, you're using them as musical instruments, right? Well, it's really satisfying, isn't it? When you bang with one of those long ones, it's sort of like popping bubble wrap or something, I think. It's got that really satisfying barcha barcha sound. Now I'm going to start using that.

While Martha and I are still in the collecting game where we want to hear your family's words for either the sounds that those tubes make when you hit somebody with them or when you make a noise through them or the names for the tubes themselves, we don't recommend violence. So be gentle with each other. 877-929-9673. Email words at waywardradio.org or find 1 million ways to reach us on our website at waywardradio.org. Hi, you have a way with words. Hi.

Hi, this is Kendall Thurman from Highland, Utah. How are you? Hey, doing well, Kendall. How are you and what's on your mind today? I am from Texas and I don't really have an accent. I kind of lost it, but

There are some things that I use like y'all. And my wife is from British Columbia, Canada. And we've had kind of a mild, like melting pot of our languages. Like she says y'all now. We've been married 27 years. And I say, I say a sometimes it's just more effective. We were driving the other day and I think I crossed an invisible line. Oh, yeah.

She was driving and it was one of those really nice drives where every green light, no red lights. And I said, man, this is awesome. You've hit an evergreen light. And she goes, excuse me? No. She says, did you just say hidden? And I said, yeah, you've hit an evergreen light. It's awesome. Yeah.

And she's like, no, uh-uh. She's like, that does not fly. You cannot say that. And she said, you have never said that in our 27 years. I said, well, sure, yeah, I have. That just makes sense. You've hit an evergreen light. I knew in my heart of hearts I was wrong, and the Internet confirmed it. But it's just one of those things, I think, when you grow up with it,

It just feels so natural. You've hidden, you know, and then there's words like got, like, oh, you've gotten or whatever, bit and bitten. So H-I-T-T-E-N. And it's, you know, as I spell it, I know it's wrong. But it just comes out so naturally. Fentel, I think you're giving up too quickly. Yeah, hang in there. Yeah.

Oh, please. This would be awesome if I could tell her I've been confirmed.

And so if you look deeply enough, you will find Charles McKay's Dictionary of Lowland Scotch from 1888. And it will show you that Hitton, H-I-T-T-E-N, is

does mean to strike or to touch violently with a blow. It's the preterite and past participle of to hit, but it says obsolete. Yes, okay, that's it. Don't say anything else. That's it. No more information. Okay, we can stop here. But listen, it says it survives in the colloquial language of the peasantry. Now, it

I don't think McKay means peasantry as a put-down because he also says the same thing in his book called The Lost Beauties of the English Language from 1874. Hmm.

So he calls it a lost beauty of the English language. How about that? Yes. Yes. That's what I needed. And my wife's going to, she's going to, I do call her the queen of Vancouver. Oh, that's lovely. And so now she's going to call me her peasant. Yeah.

You're going to balance great. If you're not already, you should already. But what's happening here is that hidden, H-I-T-T-N, is kind of over-extrapolated from the other past participles from other words. And you mentioned one, bitten. And there's written and driven. You have all these other E-N forms which exist. And so it's kind of...

accidentally logical that hit might become hit and just like bit becomes bitten. You know? It just kind of makes some sense there. So, Kendall, if you are eating those ketchup chips that you bought at the store, are they store-botten? They're store-botten. Yeah, because some people will say that. You know, store-bot sounds kind of clunky to me to say store-bot. I would probably say

Yeah, store-bought and I don't know. I don't know if I've used that phrase before. And were those potatoes growed or grown? Grown. And if you didn't like them, did you throw them out or were they throwed out? I might say throw it out just as if I'm just kind of being playful, you know, kind of like, oh, I'm fixing to throw these out.

And did you squeeze out the condiments or were the condiments squoze out? I can't say squoze. That doesn't work. And were you caught or were you catched with a D?

Yeah. See, those are all, it's all comfort words. Yeah, see? They're familiar. And all of these are irregular past participle forms, past and past participle forms. And so the problem is, is that we have these irregular, we have these weak and strong verbs, and we have regular and irregular verbs, and never the twain shall meet, except they do, because humans like to over-extrapolate. That is, we over-apply rules in places that we should not apply the rules to.

And sometimes we do it as a joke, and sometimes we do it accidentally, and sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. I just can't wait to tell the queen about this linguistic gem. What was the word again? Forgotten gem? Yeah, here it is. The book is called The Lost Beauties of the English Language.

And the author is Charles McKay. That's M-A-C-K-A-Y. The book is 1874. And it says, Hitton survives in the colloquial language of the peasantry. Oh, I love it. I love it. Yes. All right, Kendall. Give her our best wishes. Yeah. Hail to the queen. Yes. Yes. We will attend upon her at our next meeting.

Yes, thank you. Look forward to it. All right. Take care. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Take care. Bye-bye. Well, tell us about the melting pot of language in your household. 877-929-9673 or send an email to words at waywardradio.org.

Hello, you have a way with words. Hi, this is Terry from Omaha, Nebraska. Good to talk to you. I was talking with a co-worker the other day about where a client lives. She told me the house was going to be easy to get to because it's smack dab in the middle of a neighboring small town. And that got me thinking. I know exactly what she meant. My mother said smack dab. I say smack dab. I just don't know why we say smack dab. And I was wondering if you could share some insights. So you knew what she meant when she said smack dab. What...

What did she mean? Just precisely in the middle. Precisely. Like if you measured it with a ruler? Yes, like right in the middle. I've always understood it to be right in the middle. Well, when I think of the words, they're easy. You smack your lips, you smack your hand. I think of a dab of paint. I think of a dab of something. I just don't know what the smacking and the dabbing have to do with the central location for something. Yeah. And is your mother from...

the same part of the country as you and your friend who used this term? So my mom was Southern. I grew up in Missouri and I now live in Omaha. So I don't know if it's all Midwest to Southern, maybe. Wow.

Well, I'm interested in the fact that you said that she's Southern because the expression smack dab has long been used, particularly in the South and in Appalachia, for emphasis, just like we're talking about, just completely, directly, exactly in the middle. Or just completely like, I want a big mess of turnip greens right smack now. It's really emphatic.

And the term smack, you know, for a long time has referred to something that's sudden or violent, you know, a smack. But the word dab back in the 14th century actually meant to strike suddenly or to peck at.

And over time, it's come to be used to make that smack more emphatic, you know, smack dab. And we have variations of that as well, like smack jam and smack bang. It's that idea, as both of you all suggested, of something that's just completely, directly, exactly there. Okay. So...

It's the smack, the suddenness of a smack, like a hand hitting something, including the quick motion and the noise of it. And then dab used to mean...

something more physical and violent than the little delicate pat that we think of today. Well, I've heard it my whole life, so it's good to talk about it. Well, we're glad you called about it. Thank you so much. I appreciate the insight. Yeah, sure. Thank you. Take care of yourself. All right. You too. Bye-bye. Bye, Terry. Thank you.

You might be slap bang in the middle of something, but put it down and give us a call 877-929-9673 or talk to us on social media. We're on Threads, Blue Sky, Macedon, and a lot of others. You can find all those handles and nicknames on our website at waywardradio.org. ♪♪♪

Grant, I think you'll appreciate this wonderful Irish curse that's pretty elaborate. It goes, may the devil make a ladder of your backbones while picking apples in the garden of hell. Whoa, whoa.

I think we're too positive for that, Martha. How dare you invoke that in these hallowed halls? Maybe I can think of a cartoon version, you know, cute little devil. Do we have a positive one to counteract that? May the angels bless your sleep with the smell of apple pies. How about that? I love it, yes. That's much more positive. Thank you. Hit us up on email, words at waywardradio.org.

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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 I can't believe it. He's blindfolded, juggling the swords, and walking backward. It's our quiz guy, John Chinesky. Hi, John. Careful, watch your step.

Yeah, this is how I shave in the morning, by the way. All right, that explains the Band-Aids. Yeah. And the missing ear, Van Gogh. It's the blindfold, too. I don't want to see what I'm doing. So I have, this quiz is very interesting. I think we find this interesting. You know, sometimes I like it. Sometimes I can't stand it. Sometimes I find it. Sometimes I lose it. It's always on my mind. It's it, IT. In this puzzle, we're simply going to get rid of it.

I'll give you a sentence that clues two words. One has it in it. The other is without it. For example, you could donate a tenth of your earnings or just give them some doodad. That would answer...

Tithing and thing. Oh, my goodness. Tithing has I-T in it. I made the hard one the example. Oh, thank goodness. It wouldn't be all that challenging. Explain that answer again, please. Sure. Tithing, T-I-T-H-I-N-G. If you remove it, the I-T, you just get thing. Oh, okay. That's wonderful. Here it is. The planet is a tiny sphere that makes a curved path around our star.

The planet is a tiny sphere that makes a curved path around our star. So is this a planet name? I wonder. It's not. It's more general. Okay. Jupiter. Okay. Good guess. Oh, orb? Orb and orbit. Yes. Oh, nice. Orb and orbit. Very good. Please come to my party on December 24. Just click on this link to RSVP. Five letters.

Most of these are five or six letters. We're keeping it. Oh, Evite and Eve. Yes, Evite and Eve. Very good, Grant. Nice. I visited my lawyer's fancy offices to discuss my case against the city. Sue and Sweet? No, that doesn't work. What? Sweet and Sue. Yes, Sweet and Sue. You're right. There we go. Suit is close. You nailed it. You got it. Finally...

Sometimes even a monarch wants to just spend the windy day playing with a kid's toy. Sounds like every monarch I know. King Charles III. Kite and something? Yeah, a version of that. Try the verb.

I didn't even know it was a verb. Oh, kiting and king. Yes, kiting and king. I could have went with floating a check. Yeah, I was going to say. Playing with a kid's toy, much nicer, I think. Yeah, much nicer. Well, guys, that's it.

John, you need to rethink this blindfold. Your quizzes are fantastic, but your juggling... The juggling needs some work, yeah. Yeah, that's Maxwell House juggling. All right, I've got to get that unicycle retooled or refit, as it were.

Okay, I'll talk to you guys next time. Thanks for having me. Thanks, John. Watch those swords. We would love it if you called us on the phone, 877-929-9673, or send us an email. The address is words at waywardradio.org.

Hey there, you have a way with words. Hey, how's it going? My name is Kentrell and I am from West Memphis, Arkansas. What are you thinking about today in terms of language? Yeah, so I

I was calling to ask a question. I used to work for a granite company. And one of the things we talked about was some of the older guys, they would say, hey, I'm going to pull a seam. And what they were saying was that they were going to basically put two pieces of granite together, but they called it

So I was just wondering, where did that come from? Or do you have any idea of where that idea of pulling the seam really came from? So granite, the stone, G-R-A-N-I-T-E, right? Right. The only other way I've heard them say it is, yeah, we're going to go put these two pieces of granite together. That's kind of the only other way I've heard them say it.

So you put them together so they can be fastened or epoxied down, right? Maybe hold them in place with a seam setter? That's exactly what it was for. So whenever they said they were going to pull the seam, they were going to put together a mixture of epoxy in order to actually...

seam these two pieces of granite together so that they wouldn't come apart. Yeah, and you just said the magic word there, which is together. And so I think what's happening is that that adverb together is kind of being dropped in like everyday use. So when they say they're going to pull a seam, I think they mean they're going to pull a seam together, but they're just not using that word together. There is, interestingly, and it could just be a coincidence, in sewing, you know, with fabric, making clothes or garments together,

they also have pulling a seam and it's not pulling them apart. It's when you loosely stitch two edges together so that when you pull your thread at the end to tighten all those loose loops, the stitches are hidden. So you're, again, you're pulling the seams of the fabric together. So again, I think that, I think it's all about that missing adverb here, but it's, it's,

It's interesting to me that it's so understood in the field, you know, in the work that you do. Do you still do masonry or marble work? No, I am a firefighter and paramedic. Oh, well, thank you very much for helping your community. I'm happy to do it. Yeah, so that's really interesting. So with that thought in mind, one of the things that

we talk about when whether they talked about when they said pulling the seam was actually kind of trying to hide that connection too so that probably had something to do with it as well so that was that's pretty interesting oh yeah so you're saying there might be even more in common with the the sewing use than i thought yeah so that's that's actually fascinating yeah all right well thank you kentrell for your call we really appreciate it and take care of yourself out there all right

All right. Thank you so much. Y'all have a good one. Thanks for calling. Bye-bye. You too. All right. Bye-bye. Well, you've probably noticed some language in your workplace that has you thinking. We'd love to think about it with you. Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send us the whole story in email, words at waywardradio.org.

We got a voicemail from Sigrun Newell in Albany, New York, and she was commenting on that conversation that we had about talking about shaving yak hair. You remember that one, Grant? Oh, yeah, that was quite a while back, but that's when you...

just go to extremes to solve a problem. Right, right. And you're doing this monotonous, really tedious task. And it goes back to the old Ren and Stimpy show and Yak Shaving Day being this weird holiday that involves, I don't know, hanging diapers and stuffing coleslaw into rubber boots. Yeah, it was Ren and Stimpy. You just don't know. Yeah.

Yeah, and there was something about shaving a yak in there. Anyway, when Sigrun was listening to our conversation, what she heard was shaving the gnat, G-N-A-T. Gnat.

And she said, I kept on thinking, boy, that's a really great metaphor for a tiny, tedious, meaningless job. That's perfect. No, it's Y-A-K, but let's start G-N-A-T, shaving the gnat. Shaving the gnat. Yeah, this is how egg corns get started, right? Boy, you're going to spend all your time shaving the gnat, G-N-A-T. Little gnat legs. Doing the useless.

Right. It's a whole spa thing. California took them up with anything to make a buck. Right. Sigrun, thank you for that one. 877-929-9673.

Hey there, you have a way with words. Hi, this is Rose. I'm calling from Edmonton, Kentucky. When I first got married, my mother-in-law would say something. She would say this word and I thought it was just her. It was, oh, well, that's a good ideal. And I thought it was just her saying idea, maybe incorrectly or just with her.

southern accent. But then I started hearing other people say the same thing. Oh, good ideal. And I just kind of wondered, you know, was that just a slang in the area or exactly where it came from? And they're all there in Kentucky near you? Yep. Yeah. In South Central, pretty rural area of Kentucky. Okay.

Yeah, that kind of tracks. That's actually a fairly common dialect feature and very appropriate to that area. And you'll hear that in various parts of the United States in the South and Appalachia and in some of the mid-Atlantic states. These are the

parts of New York and Pennsylvania and New Jersey and in other parts of the United States, it'll manifest as an R instead of an L. And those, as you may know, the L and the R are pronounced in

almost the same way in the mouth. And often it has to do with what sound follows that word. And sometimes it has to do with kind of the habituation of the mouth. There's a lot of complicated linguistic stuff that we can get into, but I don't know that anybody would keep their radio on after that.

Okay. But a common one that you may have heard of before, instead of the L going, the R goes. So the word idea, instead of sounding like ideal...

as you say, sounds like I-D-E-R with an R at the end of it. And you'll hear that very often in the United Kingdom. So some of what's happening here is they're bridging two vowels. Like the mouth wants there to be a consonant between two vowels. So word A ends with a vowel and the following word, word B, begins with a vowel. And so the mouth just kind of automatically inserts a consonant and

And the L and the R are both kind of liquidy consonants. So it puts them in there because they're not very hard consonants. So, for example, the word I saw it sometimes sounds like I saw it, S-A-W-L, because the W and the I kind of are both vowel-like. I saw it.

So that's part of what could be happening. There are a lot of other things there, but usually it just has to be with what is most comfortable for the mouth. The way that we do our vowels and our certain dialects habituates us. That is, it makes us more likely to pronounce vowels in a certain way and to end our words in a certain way. So I wouldn't be surprised if you listen more

to the speech of your in-laws, Rose, if you'll hear them do other words with the L at the end where you wouldn't ordinarily hear it. Well, we appreciate the call anyway, Rose, and you take care of yourself now, all right? Okay. Thank you so much. Bye-bye. You too. Bye-bye. How do they talk in your part of the world? Let us know. 877-929-9673.

We had a voicemail from Ed Lawrence. He was calling about that conversation that we had about what you call that thing that you use to change the channels when you're watching TV. It's called your children. Ha ha ha!

Or at least it was when I was growing up. Well, funny. You should mention that. You know, we talked about how some people call it a clicker or a channel changer. But speaking of children, Ed says that his three-year-old son used to say, I need the emote control. Oh. And Ed says, we've called it the emote control ever since. And I'm thinking, gosh, I know some people who could use some emote control. Yeah.

Yeah, three-year-olds are definitely all in need of remote control. I don't think many of us get it until we're in our early 20s. That's true. Good point. Occasionally, I have waves of need of remote control now in my middle ages. Right, so you don't tear your hair out.

Emote control. Well, Martha and I like to help you control your emotes when it comes to talking about language and books and reading and writing and talking, whether badly or well. Call us 877-929-9673. Hello, you have a way with words. Good afternoon. How are you doing out there in California?

I'm all right. Who am I talking to and where are you? My name is Frederick Kohler. I live in Valdosta, which is south Georgia. Well, there's an expression, knock galley west. And I read about it in some book and it referred to, I believe, Mark Twain may have first used it in the United States and he gets some credit for it.

It's an interesting and intriguing expression to me. It might mean to knock something into or break something into smithereens, but I wanted to get your take on that expression, knock, galley west, two words, knock and galley west, or just galley west, what it might mean from your studies. So spell that for us, if you would, knock galley west. Okay, knock is just like knock down a tree and

And Gally West is G-A-L-L-E-Y-W-E-S-T. So the first word is K-N-O-C-K.

Yes. And you said it was something like to break something into smithereens. Well, to knock Gally West sounds like that's supposed to mean something like that. Okay. Gotcha. To really destroy or obliterate something. And tell us again what you heard about Mark Twain. I heard that Mark Twain first used the expression in...

In his book, which I read years ago, Life on the Mississippi. Okay. Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised. He was in touch with language, Martha. He just had an ear for things.

Yes, and he did use this term several times, although he's not the first person to do that. But I remember that in Huck Finn, he's talking about Huck trying to play a trick on Aunt Sally and she gets mad and she grabs up this basket and slams it across the house and knocked the cat galley west.

So, yeah, I sort of knocked it really hard and sent it flying. But, yeah, you're right. Knock, galley west means to send everything into confusion, send everything into all directions. You know, like I think of like wearing a pearl necklace and somehow the string breaks and all the beads go galley west. They go all over the place.

just like you said. But it was around before Mark Twain, and actually we think that it's a variant of a word that goes all the way back to the 16th century, which is the word collywest or collyweston, which in England meant crooked or awry or generally just messed up or disordered. And beyond that, we don't know where this term comes from. It might come from a person's name or

There is a village in the middle of England called Colley Weston, and this village is known for producing slate that people use on roofs. They use it to make shingles. And there is a story that the folks there in Colley Weston sold their best pieces of slate for the highest prices and then furnished their own.

own roofs with irregular pieces, less desirable ones that made their roofs all look messy or crooked. So there is a story like that floating around, but we really don't know if that's true. But you will find this expression, Galley West or not Galley West or go Galley West, scattered throughout especially the northern United States.

And where did you run across it? Was it in reading Twain? No, I think it was in some kind of dictionary of unusual expressions. And as you know, I think it was called a browser's dictionary, but that was years ago. I don't have the dictionary anymore. As you know, Mark Twain was very literate, and he was infatuated with the West, and he wrote a book called Roughing It.

I think it was used in newspapers, different articles. But I have an expression, a time when I can express my use of Galley West. When I was in second grade, I was late getting back to class, and our lockers were inside of our room. And I had to hurry and get my metal lunchbox, which we had in those days, full.

full of marbles into my locker. And as I was opening the locker, somehow the lid on my metal lunchbox opened and all the marbles went all over the room. They were, I guess they were not Gally West and my teacher confiscated all of them. And I was mortified and embarrassed at everything because I lost my marbles and I had to sit down. You lost your marbles. Yeah.

Like something out of a Looney Tunes cartoon. That's a perfect example. I'm sorry, Fred. That sounds like a terrible thing for a kid. It's a true story, and I look back on it fondly, but at the time, of course, I was just benumbed with anxiety and terror. It's terrible. It's terrible.

Well, listen, thank you for sharing your story with us. And thanks for your question. We really appreciate it. Thanks, Fred. Bye. Bye. 877-929-9673. I can say to my new Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, hey, find a keto-friendly restaurant nearby and text it to Beth and Steve. And it does without me lifting a finger. So I can get in more squats anywhere I can. One, two, three. Will that be cash or credit? Credit. Credit.

You're listening to A Way With Words, the show about language and how we use it. I'm Grant Barrett. And I'm Marcia.

And I'm Martha Barnett. You know, Grant, if you think about it, flashlight is a weird word, isn't it? Flashlight, the thing with batteries in it that gives out light so you can see in the darkness? Flashlight? Yes, a steady beam of light, though. So why is it called a flashlight? Right, it's steady. Okay. All right.

You figured it out, though, right? I did. And the answer actually involves a couple of fascinating stories, one of which shows how old words can take on new meanings and another one which tells us about how hard it can be to coin a word and try to get people to continue to use it. Now, in the case of flashlights, these portable electric lights were invented back in the 1890s. And back

then batteries were so weak and their bulbs were so inefficient that they would only emit light for just a few seconds at a time. So they literally were flashlights. You'd hold up the light and turn it on and you'd briefly see what was in front of you and then the light would shut off and the batteries would have to rest a while and then you could turn it on. Oh.

a little bit later. So initially, these devices were called flashers or flashlights, at least in the U.S. In the U.K., they were first called portable electric torches. You know, and now today, they're just called torches. Over the next few years, the batteries and the bulbs improved, but people still called them flashlights. So that name stuck around even as its meaning changed.

But here's the other part that I think is really cool. That technology soon advanced so much that the EverReady flashlight company decided to have a contest to coin a new word for these devices. And back in 1916, they ran ads about this contest all over the country.

with a better word for flashlight and we'll give you $3,000 which is roughly $87,000 today. Wow. I know. It was brilliant marketing. There was lots of press, lots of excitement, lots of local feature stories in newspapers about people who entered the contest to create a word for what EverReady called the product

That has outgrown its name. And so a few months later, the EverReady company decided that we're not just going to pay out $3,000. We're going to pay out $12,000 to four different contestants who supposedly independently came up with the same winning name. And you want to know the winning entry in this contest? Boy, do I. Daylo.

Exactly. Sad trombone. Exactly. Daylo. D-A-Y-L-O. I don't get it either. But Everready said, oh, Daylo is easy to remember and pronounce. And the day part suggests perfect light. And lo means behold. But obviously, it didn't change people's linguistic habits. Because, you know, you don't have $3,000 involved. You're going to go back to your old word. Ah, Daylo. Daylo.

I gotta say, one of the things I love about our listeners, they come to us with the best questions.

questions. And on this show, when we say that's a great question, we ain't just talking. We mean it. So come to us with your best questions, and Martha and I will try to come to you with our best answers. 877-929-9673 is this magical 24-hour toll-free number available in the United States and Canada. And for all you wonderful people somewhere else in the world, we've got social media, we've got WhatsApp, we've got phone numbers in Mexico and the United Kingdom, and you can find those on our website at waywardradio.org.

Hello, you have a way with words. Hi. Hi, Grant. Hi, Martha. This is Michelle, and I am calling from Thorn Bay, Alaska, on Prince of Wales Island, in the Inside Passage. Oh, Thorn Bay. That sounds like a mystery novel. What can we do for you, Michelle? Well, I have a question about the term nervous melly. Okay.

I refer to myself a lot as a nervous Nelly whenever I'm a driver or a passenger on a snowy and icy road. And it just occurred to me that I had no idea what that meant. And then I thought I'd call you guys that, you know, who are you going to call? Granted, Martha. Get it in. Get it.

Yeah, so who was Nellie and why was she so nervous is what you're wondering, I guess. Right, and in my mind, I picture it as kind of like an olive oil character. Like, oh my, oh no, you know, knees knocking. Yeah. Bye-bye. Right, exactly. Well, I love the image of olive oil, but

Martha, what about a diplomat who won a Nobel Prize? How about that?

Yes, what's really interesting about this term, nervous Nelly, meaning somebody who's, you know, kind of skittish and uncertain, we first see it popping up in the early 1920s, and it was popularized by its use in politics, especially involving a guy named Frank B. Kellogg. He was a politician who served in the U.S. Senate.

And Calvin Coolidge appointed him as Secretary of State. And he was actually a high achiever in that he was part of a group that wrote the Kellogg-Briand Act, in which signing nations renounced war as an instrument of national policy. And he actually won the Nobel Peace Prize for this.

But he was also known for being kind of nervous and hot-tempered and outspoken, kind of emotional. And he was known for hemming and hawing over whether the U.S. should join the League of Nations. And so he got

kind of this reputation and some people have speculated that maybe some of his personality had to do with the fact that he was completely self-educated. He never went to college. He never went to law school, but he just worked his way up

to become this well-known politician. And so people started calling him Nervous Nelly. And then it became extended to anybody who was overly timid or cautious. Isn't

Isn't that interesting? That is, I did not expect that one bit. So the Nelly part, the Nelly part is just like alliteration or something? Yeah, yeah. That alliteration works really well. And, you know, some people have speculated that maybe a nervous Nelly is like a horse, you know, like a whoa Nelly, like a horse. But, yeah.

We don't have any real evidence for that. But what is so interesting to me is that it initially got popularized by its association with this well-known politician. There's a newspaper article that talks about a joke that was associated with Kellogg. And they describe one of the ways in which he...

Wow. It came from politics. In what years was this?

So he lived until 1937. The Kellogg brand pact was 1927 and he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1929. Okay. Well, you just blew my mind because that was totally, totally not what I pictured. But that makes a lot of sense. That's what we're here for, man. That's right. Our work here is done. Yeah.

Right. And that gives me, now I can research it myself, now that I know what I'm looking into. Yeah, check out Frank B. Kellogg.

Okay, well, thank you, Martha and Grant, and I appreciate your time and your information and getting us through a really hard time in the past few years. You guys carried us. Aw, that's very sweet. You take care of yourself. Thank you, Michelle. Bye-bye. It's mutual.

Yeah. All right. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. 877-929-9673. Email words at waywardradio.org. Grant, did you ever wonder why those little sparkly things are called rhinestones? So we're talking like classic Las Vegas costume jewelry where you're just covered in just this massive, it's not worth a thing, but it looks fantastic kind of plastic sparkles. Right.

So it's R-H-I-N-E, right? Rhinestones? Exactly. Rhinestone is a loan translation of French, calou du Rhin, which is literally Rhin pebble, because these sparkly fake gems were originally cut from rock crystal found in the Rhine River. The Rhine River, that European river. One of the most famous rivers in all of Europe. Yes, yes. That's amazing. I know. I know.

I know. I just thought that was so cool, you know, picturing people in rhinestones, and it's a lone translation. Yeah, I'm thinking of Elvis and Siegfried and Roy and all these famous faces that have worn, Liberace, all of them have worn a river. That's pretty cool, Martha. You bring the best stuff. I really appreciate it.

I know Martha and I will often pop up on social media. When you're talking to us on social media, you are talking to us more times than not. You can find all of our social media nicknames and handles on our website at waywardradio.org. Hi there. You have a way with words. Hi there. This is Joey. I'm calling from Orono, Minnesota. So I just graduated from the University of Arizona, and one of my majors was Italian Studies.

Part of that was learning the language and I was able to get a good understanding of the language especially when I spent a semester in Italy, but

But what I realized in learning another language is how much of it really relies on kind of the history of the country, and it's not...

exactly just the words themselves, which is pretty complex and I feel like it would be quite difficult to really thoroughly learn any second language because of how much history there is behind a language. So my question is,

If there is a language that really doesn't have that kind of context where it's simple to learn in a classroom setting and you can really take command of the language just based on the words themselves. So you're looking for a language that doesn't have a lot of idiomatic or colloquial or proverbial kind of...

layers to it. Exactly, yes. I suppose, you know, one of the finest examples I had was in an essay that I was writing in Italian. I wrote the phrase, eye to eye, and my professor has no idea what I was trying to say. And conversely, I was meeting my uncle for dinner, and he speaks

English is his native language. I was emailing him in Italian and the way you say I can't wait translates in English directly to I can't see the time. Yeah, I ran into that with Spanish. No veo las horas. I don't see the hours until I can see you. That's lovely. I do love it. Yeah. So I think Martha

And you both have really tipped off with that, I don't see the hours, I don't see the time. There is a perspective here that I want to encourage, which is finding a willingness to embrace this idiomaticy, this colloquialism, without being uncomfortable with it and not feeling like you have to master it 100%.

You don't even know English 100%, even though you might feel like you do. It is impossible, impossible to know 100% of a language. Just accept that there is always going to be a level of colloquialism that just escapes you. And that is part of the joy of language is the sense of discovery. That said, all that aside, just push that away. To answer your real question, there are languages that you could learn that have a lot less

colloquialisms and idioms and proverbs and they are invented languages like Esperanto.

Now Esperanto is a language that was invented to try to be that universal language that people could go anywhere in the world and not have a lot of those cultural trappings that bring the biases and the histories that kind of make it so you think, oh, that's their language. I don't want to speak their language because they did this a thousand years ago to my people. But Esperanto does have some idioms, but they tend mostly to either be

borrowed from the world's languages and translated word for word. Like there's one I think about roses with thorns. There is no rose without thorns. Or they tend to be idioms about the language itself, you know, about the people who invented the language.

So that's one thing to consider. There are a huge number of Esperantists, people who have conferences and they write books and they enjoy meeting each other around the world. And Esperanto, because it is heavily drawn from European languages, is actually not a bad language to learn in terms of using it to branch off into other Latin-based languages. And speaking of that, classical Latin, because you enjoy Italian...

Latin might feel very familiar to you. And it has kind of an objective grammatical system. And there's a clarity in Latin that many find very elegant. Now, it does have sayings and idioms and stuff, but the way that it's structured strikes many as...

nearly ideal. Now, I think it's often overblown and overstated, but you might find something there that you're just not getting with Italian. And you also have to remember that Italian is in some ways almost a constructive language because it is so heavily fed by all these regional dialects of languages that aren't quite Italian and themselves were derived independently from Latin.

The boot of Italy is filled with these regional languages that have never fully been subsumed by any other language and have existed on their own for many centuries, if not thousands of years.

So that's kind of one of the issues with Italian. It's constantly peppered with all these other dialects and all their different diversions and distractions. So those are the suggestions that I would make off the top of my head. Is Esperanto a contemporary language? I think it's more than 100 years old, actually. There's long been these movements to try to come up with a language that...

As a way of unifying the world's people, we could speak when we're together and kind of recreate this idea of one people, one language. It's never really worked. And Esperanto isn't a language that people tend to teach to children. So it's not in that way a living language. That said, it's always had its advocates since the very beginning. And there are conferences and books and people who speak it.

and teach it to themselves and teach others tend to be very passionate about it. So it's got a wonderful, energetic community of speakers who welcome new learners to it. So it might be worth working into if you want to find a new community of passionate language learners. I would love to hear from Esperantis. And also, I have to wonder if getting together at a conference, you don't develop the language a little bit?

You know, a little idiom here and there, a little shared joke, a little slang. I'm very curious to hear from people as to whether they have that experience with Esperanto. So there we go. No kidding. That's our best advice. I'm sure our listeners will jump in with their own ideas. But Joey, that's what we've got for you.

Well, that's wonderful. I really appreciate you taking the question, and it sounds like I have quite a lot of reading to do now. Always. We're all like that, aren't we? Every day is a new book. Oh, definitely. All right. Take care of yourself now. 877-929-9673.

Away With Words senior producer is Stephanie Levine. Tim Felton is our engineer and editor, and John Chinesky is our quiz master. Go to waywardradio.org for all of our past episodes, podcast links, and ways to reach us. If you have a language, thought, or question, the toll-free line is always open in the U.S. and Canada.

1-877-929-9673. A Wayward Words is an independent nonprofit production of Wayward, Inc. It's supported by listeners and organizations who are changing the way the world talks about language. Although we're not a part of NPR, we thank NPR stations throughout the United States that carry the show. And special thanks to our nonprofits volunteer board.

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.