Name: Counting (age 2) by Lauren Hall-Lew
Duration: 15 s
Description: My son counting to "eleventeen" at 35 months old.

Katie in Kalamazoo, Michigan, wonders about the expression throw the book at, meaning to "try every means possible." Did it originally involve literally throwing books? It's just a metaphor in which the book refers to "the criminal code." In the early 1900s, if someone got the book, they received the maximum sentence for a crime. So no, it doesn't have to do with tossing books--although thwacking books has been used to relieve people of so-called Bible bumps. http://waywordradio.org

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Penny in Savannah, Georgia, recalls that her father, a Navy veteran who served in the South Pacific, would say of someone who was clueless or didn't know what he was talking about: That person doesn't know if he's punched, bored, or drifted. There are lots of versions, particularly in the United Kingdom and Australia, all of them metaphorically referring to the action of woodworking tools on wood, which included such verbs as drilled, countersunk, reamed, and tapered. Other versions include bored, punched, drilled, or countersunk and punched, bored, or burnt out by lightning. http://waywordradio.org

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Sean in Oneonta, New York, says that when he was growing up in New Jersey, his family would pile in the car and set off on a surprise adventure, whether a short distance or long, and the kids would be told only that they were going on Buxtehude, meaning some "undetermined place." There's a small town in Germany called Buxtehude, and Germans use the expression aus Buxtehude to mean "from the boondocks" or "in the middle of nowhere." The town also figures in the story of "The Hare and the Hedgehog" from Grimm's Fairy Tales (Bookshop|Amazon). Buxtehude is also fancifully described as the place where dogs bark with their tails. http://waywordradio.org

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When you're talking about the location of an inanimate object, is it okay to say that it lives there, as in The peanut butter lives in that cabinet or The flashlight lives on that shelf? Strictly speaking, of course, that object isn't alive, but plenty of people still use that expression, and it makes grammatical sense, so if that's a peeve of yours, let it go. http://waywordradio.org

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Dog rescue groups such as California Labradors, Retrievers, and More often keep track of their many adoptable puppies by naming each litter according to themes. Once adopted, an animal's characteristics or behavior may suggest other names. And pets' names may also evolve over time. http://waywordradio.org

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The German phrase Der Bus hält an jeder Milchkanne literally translates as "The bus stops at every milk can," and refers to a bus that stops at every little out-of-the-way town. http://waywordradio.org

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If you find yourself addicted to seaweed, no need to worry! There's a punny solution for that. http://waywordradio.org

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In basketball, a snowbird is a player who hangs back while the rest of her team plays defense. That way, she's ready to break for the basket when her team gets the ball. The terms snowbird and snowbirding most likely derive from the use of the term snowbird for someone who moves south for the winter. http://waywordradio.org

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After our conversation about wishing well eggs, a listener from Viroqua, Wisconsin, chimes in with another name for this egg-in-toast dish: UFOs, short for Unidentified Frying Objects. http://waywordradio.org

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Quiz Guy John Chaneski insists that the names of modern Olympic sports resulted from changing one letter in the original names for each activity. For example, he says, the pole vault must have originated from an earlier sport in which participants jumped over what kind of small, lemming-like rodents? http://waywordradio.org

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My son counting to "eleventeen" at 35 months old.

Counting (age 2)

Lauren Hall-Lew

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