When did we stop referring to young urban professionals as yuppies? A listener in Madison, Wisconsin, says his younger co-workers told him they'd never heard of the word. The use of the word yuppie peaked around 1990, and has dramatically dropped ever since. Hippie, on the other hand, arose in the 1940s, then peaked around 1970, but had a resurgence in 2013 before starting to decline again. http://waywordradio.org

1637-Caller-Mark-Yuppies

When Tony from Fort Worth, Texas, ordered chicken fajitas at a restaurant, the server replied Perfect! He's pretty confident that his order was hardly outstanding, much less perfect. He's noticed that increasingly, the response Perfect! doesn't literally mean "perfect," but something more like "Okay!" or "I understand." What's up with that? http://waywordradio.org

1637-Caller-Tony-Perfect

Those annoying add-on fees that come at the end of an online transaction are part of a lucrative practice known as drip pricing. The word drip has become a descriptor for anything that slowly increases revenue. For example, drip marketing involves multiple contacts over time, like a long series of brief email messages. http://waywordradio.org

1637-Drip-Pricing

Allyn from North Dallas, Texas, who hosts a YouTube show about knitting called Sal & Al: The Woolslayers, emails the show to share some favorite slang used by knitters. LYS stands for one's Local Yarn Shop, as opposed to a big-box store. Frogging means to pull apart a knitted portion with a mistake in it. Squishy mail is an order of yarn delivered by the postal carrier, and squishy mail is added to one's stash, which is a supply of yarn currently not in use for a project. http://waywordradio.org

1637-Intro-Knitting-Language

A monk at St. Gregory's Abbey in Three Rivers, Michigan, a Benedictine monastery in the Episcopal Church, shares some of the terms used there on a daily basis. The monks gather seven times a day to pray as a group, a practice called corporate prayer, because they're praying a body, as opposed to the private prayer they do while going about their daily chores. They are assigned tasks on a rotating basis, and also take turns as church cantor. Because the cantor performs this duty for seven days, that person is called the hebdomadary, from Greekἑβδομάς  meaning "seven," and is related to the French for "weekly magazine," hebdomadaire, or hebdo for short. The dining hall at the monastery is called the refectory, from a Latin term that means "a place of restoration." To refect is "to refresh oneself or another person with food or drink," a word that goes back to a Latin term that means "make" or "do" and is also the source of such words as confectionary, confection, and manufacture. Incidentally, mealtimes are silent, but each week a different person is assigned to read aloud from a book while everyone else eats. Among the books on this year's reading list is A History of Women in Astronomy and Space Exploration: Exploring the Trailblazers of STEM (Bookshop|Amazon) by Dale DeBakcsy. Others include Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy (Bookshop|Amazon) by Cathy O'Neil, as well as Yiddish: Biography of a Language (Bookshop|Amazon) by Jeffrey Shandler. http://waywordradio.org

1637-Lex-Bag-Monastery-Language

The Spanish equivalent of fur baby, an affectionate term for one's pets, is perrijo or perrija, a combination of perro, "dog," and hijo or hija, meaning "son" or "daughter." http://waywordradio.org

1637-Perrijo

When the pressure drops in an airplane cabin and all the oxygen masks fall, pilots refer to all that equipment hanging down as a rubber jungle. http://waywordradio.org

1637-Rubber-Jungle

Among knitters, SABLE is an acronym for "Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy," a joking reference to "a supply of yarn so huge that there's no way you could possibly knit it all before you die." http://waywordradio.org

1637-SABLE

Knitters speak of being stranded on Sleeve Island. As the host of Sal & Al: The Woolslayers explains: Being on Sleeve Island is the feeling you get when you think you're almost finished with a sweater because you've completed the part that goes over the torso. Then you realize that actually, the sleeves themselves will also require a whole lot more knitting. http://waywordradio.org

1637-Sleeve-Island

Quiz Guy John Chaneski has been thumbing through The Devil's Dictionary (Bookshop|Amazon), the satirical work by Ambrose Bierce that provides cheeky definitions for familiar words. For example, Bierce defines the word positive as "Mistaken at the top of one's voice." John wants to know: Based on their definitions, can you guess a series of words that Bierce features in his dictionary? For example, what's a 10-letter word that starts with A and might be defined as "Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves." http://waywordradio.org

1637-Word-Quiz-The-Devil's-Dictionary

Artist Diane Burko and Dr. Ann Sutherland Harris, co-founder of Women’s Caucus for Art, speak of their experiences in working with Alice Neel.  Dr. Harris has written about the 20th century portrait artist and curated an exhibition of her work in Los Angeles.

Diane Burko & Dr. Ann Sutherland Harris Reflect on FOCUS & Alice Neel

Moore College of Art & Design prepares students for lifelong learning and leadership in the fine arts, design arts, art history, art education and curatorial studies. As the first and only art and design college for women, Moore advances the role of women in the visual arts and ensures their success by bridging the worlds of education and work. As a leader in the arts and cultural communities, Moore promotes the visual arts through distinctive education and gallery programs.

Diane Burko & Dr. Ann Sutherland Harris Reflect on FOCUS & Alice Neel

Moore College

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