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Default as a noun and default as a verb are the same word, with a familiar English stress shift: Nouns often take first-syllable stress, while verbs often take second-syllable stress, as with the different pronunciations of record. A New York City listener ask how and whether defaulting on a loan is related to default settings on a computer. Both go back through French to Latin fallere, “to deceive, fail, or escape notice,” with de- connoting the idea of “away.” In finance, sports, and software, the word has to do with not acting, though in computing the negative judgment has mostly vanished. English later restored the l in default, reflecting its Latin root, after inheriting French defaut without it. http://waywordradio.org

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Lisa from Tabernacle, New Jersey, grew up using the term Cabbage Night to refer to the night before Halloween when all manner of mischief takes place.The term itself goes back to the 1860s, while the custom of pranks on October 30 is older. The cabbage part is quite literal: Pranksters threw rotten cabbages, or skunk cabbage, at doors, leaving a thudding surprise and a memorable stink. Cabbage Night is commonly used in northern New Jersey. Other regional names include Beggar’s Night, Devil’s Night, Goosey Night, Corn Night, Mischief Night, and Picket Night. http://waywordradio.org

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Ketchup, catsup, and catchup are all anglicized versions of a Chinese dialect term for a type of fish brine. In the 17th century British and Dutch traders brought the sauce to Europe, and the name evolved, as did the recipe, which eventually included tomatoes. In 1876, Pittsburgh entrepreneur Henry Heinz sold what he called Heinz Tomato Catsup, then later changed the catsup to ketchup to stand apart from competitors. The Del Monte Company kept catsup until 1988. If an announcer on the old-time radio program The Rocky Jordan Show sounded like they were pronouncing the name of this condiment to sound like “cat soup,” that was probably just a slip of the tongue or ear. http://waywordradio.org

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Mary from Greensboro, North Carolina, asks about an expression her Canadian mother used when Mary’s room looked particularly messy: A cow couldn’t find her calf in here! The more common version is A cow couldn’t find its calf in this room!, which was popularized by Addison Mizner, a Palm Beach architect who in the early 1900s co-authored a wry series of books featuring such witticisms as “Where there’s a will, there’s a lawsuit” and “The wages of gin is debt.” http://waywordradio.org

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Authors often go through several working titles before settling on one. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (Bookshop|Amazon) was originally Trimalchio in West Egg, Trimalchio being an ostentatious nouveau riche character in an ancient Roman work.The title for Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind (Bookshop|Amazon) also went through several iterations that included Milestones, Tote the Weary Load, Not in Our Stars, Bugle Sang True, and Tomorrow is Another Day. http://waywordradio.org

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Amid a 1796 heat wave, Jane Austen wrote to her sister: “What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance.” http://waywordradio.org

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In How to Kill a Language: Power, Resistance, and the Race to Save Our Words (Bookshop|Amazon), British journalist Sophia Smith-Galer writes about linguicide, the erasure or suppression of a language. This loss may be brutally overt—the result of colonialism, occupation, or laws criminalizing a mother tongue—or more subtle, as when instruction in that language is omitted from school curricula and public life or treated as backward. Smith-Galer travels to Ghana, where she learns that climate change and migration are accelerating the loss of the Dagbani language. In Northern California, she meets activists trying to preserve the Karuk tongue, which is endangered because U.S. policies forced children into boarding schools and punished them for speaking their native language. For Smith-Galer, the question is also personal: As an adult, she discovers that the “dialect” she heard her grandmother and mother speak growing up was actually an endangered language from the mountains of northern Italy. http://waywordradio.org

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The Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary now includes an entry for TL;DR. It’s a speedy way of dismissing overlong text, or introducing a shortened version of something. Also rendered as TLDR, this useful locution also inspired AI;DR, short for AI;didn’t read, a snarky response to AI slop, and TL;DW, short for too long, didn’t watch, applied such things as a long video that should have been much shorter. http://waywordradio.org

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Quiz Guy John Chaneski dreamed that the long S was still in use, just as when the founders wrote the Bill of Rights, and spelled Congress as Congrefs. That dream inspired this week’s puzzle, in which common words seem confusing until you realize that the F in a word should actually be an S. For example, if the clue is I read about children who have winter fun on a snowy hill, but I thought they ran away, what’s the answer? http://waywordradio.org

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A listener in Newport News, Virginia, says that sometimes, just for fun, he answers the phone with a homophonous I’m here to hear. You have my ear! http://waywordradio.org

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