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

A native Texan says his Canadian wife teases him about his use of hitten for a past participle, as in You have hitten every green light instead of You have hit every green light. Charles Mackay's 1888 work, A Dictionary of Lowland Scotch, does include the word hitten, describing it as a preterite and past participle of hit that "survives in the colloquial language of the peasantry." Mackey also includes hitten in his 1874 book Lost Beauties of the English Language. Hitten follows a pattern similar to those of gotten, written, driven, and bitten. Similarly, some people will use the variant store-boughten rather than store-bought. Other irregular past participle forms used colloquially include squoze for squeezed, catched for caught, and growed for grown. http://waywordradio.org

1652-Caller-Kendall-Hitten

Michelle in Thorne Bay, Alaska, wonders why a skittish person may be called a Nervous Nellie. That term is associated with the nickname of politician Frank B. Kellogg, who was considered overly emotional and indecisive, but who also won the 1929 Nobel Peace Prize. The phrase Whoa, Nellie used to calm horses may have reinforced this term's use. http://waywordradio.org

1652-Caller-Michelle-Nervous-Nellie

Rose in Edmonton, Kentucky, notes that many people in her area pronounce the word idea as if it were ideal. That's a common dialectal feature in the Southern United States, as well as Appalachia and the Mid-Atlantic. In parts of New England, idea may be pronounced as if it has a final R. These alternate pronunciations often become habitual partly because of the sounds made on either side of that final syllable, and also because they're easy to say. http://waywordradio.org

1652-Caller-Rose-Ideal

Following our conversation about words for TV remotes, a listener reports that his three-year-old son dubbed their device the emote control, which sounds like something we could all use from time to time. http://waywordradio.org

1652-Emote-Control

The cardboard cylinder left after the last sheet of toilet tissue or wrapping paper comes off the roll has inspired families to make up a lot of names for the tube or the sounds you can make with it. These include oh-ah, oh-ah, drit-drit, dah-dah, hoo-hoo, and as a Las Vegas, Nevada, listener reports, barcha-barcha. http://waywordradio.org

1652-Intro-Barcha-Barcha

An old Irish curse goes: May the devil make a ladder of your backbones while picking apples in the garden of hell. If you'd rather offer someone a friendlier wish, try May angels bless your sleep with the smell of apple pies. http://waywordradio.org

1652-Irish-Curse

A flashlight doesn't flash. It provides a steady beam of light. So why is it called a flashlight?  The earliest versions lit up only briefly before the batteries gave out and required a recharge, so they were literally "flash lights."  Years later, in 1916, Eveready flashlight company held a nationwide contest to coin a new word for the new, improved version. The winning entry? Daylo. Obviously, Daylo didn't catch on. The old word, flashlight, stuck around in the United States, while in the United Kingdom, this illumination aid was called an electric torch or later, simply a torch. http://waywordradio.org

1652-Lex-Bag-Flashlight

The English word rhinestone is a loan translation of French caillou du Rhin, or literally “Rhine pebble,” because these sparkly fake gems were first cut from rock crystal found in the Rhine River. http://waywordradio.org

1652-Rhinestone

Sigrin writes from Albany, New York, that she misheard our earlier conversation about the expression shaving yak hair meaning "performing a monotonous, tedious task." At first she thought we said shaving gnat hair, which she figures is an equally apt term for doing a thankless, boring task. http://waywordradio.org

1652-Shaving-Gnat-Hair

Quiz Guy John Chaneski has been thinking a lot about it--that is, how the presence or absence of the letters I-T can clue different words. Each of this puzzle's sentences suggests one word containing the letters I-T, and a second word that's formed when the it is removed. For example, what two words are clued that way by the following sentence? You could give them a tenth of your earnings, or just give them some doodad. http://waywordradio.org

1652-Word-Quiz-IT

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

Counting (age 2)

Lauren Hall-Lew

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