Linguist Deborah Tannen has done extensive research into contrasting conversational styles, particularly the contrast between high-involvement speakers, whose interruptions signal great enthusiasm and engagement, and high-considerateness speakers, whose style is marked by reflective pauses and polite turn-taking. Neither style is inherently superior, and being aware of those differences and adjusting one's style and expectations can foster more satisfying and effective communication. http://waywordradio.org

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Galen in White River, Arizona, asks: Is there really a "neutral" accent, and if so, what is it? http://waywordradio.org

1613-Caller-Galen-Nuetral-Accent

The SAT is changing things up, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Just because words like membranous are no longer in the verbal section doesn't mean kids aren't learning important vocabulary. And speaking of useful terms, shouldn't we have an English word for "the parents of your child's spouse"? Actually, there is one. And if your daughter gets divorced, should she call her former husband her . . .  wasband? Plus, Sheboyganisms like fry out and hot tamales, please find attached and other e-mail language, the two meanings of inertia, Z-plurals, and mispronounced words. http://waywordradio.org

Hard Words Are Hard (full episode)

Meg says that when she was growing up near Boston, Massachusetts, her dad used to entertain kids with a phrase that sounded like Ish biddly oten doten bobo ba deeten dotten wanotten shhhhh! That's most likely adapted from a camp song from the 1950s called "Flee Fly Flo" that has lots of different versions, is also called "Flea Fly Flo," and may have roots in scat singing. Parts of the song have shown up in other songs, such as Chubby Checker's 1964 song "Cu Ma La Be Stay." The 1944 movie National Barn Dance featured the song "Down Home Rag (Deeten Dotten Dooten)," which includes some similar-sounding nonsense lyrics. http://waywordradio.org

1624-Caller-Meg-Camp-Song

What's YOUR choice for the Word of the Year for 2011? What word or phrase best sums up the ideas, events, and themes that speakers of English have been talking about? Grant shares some of his picks. And speaking of picks, why do football commentators seem to love the term pick-six? Also, great quotations from writers, the meaning of such Britishisms as cheeky and naff, the intentionally misspelled and mispronounced word defulgaty and a discussion of whether the term ladies is offensive. And does the insect called an earwig really crawl into people's ears at night?

Bah, Humblebrag! (Full Episode)

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

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

To grok something means "to understand it completely." The word grok comes from a language spoken on the planet Mars -- well, at least according to the science fiction writer who coined the term! Also, we know the meaning of the word trauma, but is there a word that denotes "the opposite of trauma"? Plus, if someone describes something as "wicked good," they mean it's extremely good, especially if they're from New England. All that, plus cut to the chase, super-short town names,  a puzzle that involves lopping off letters, an Ethiopian proverb, hell strip vs. devil strip, words from the Norn language, corny, This wicked good show's as cool as 4-55 air conditioning! http://waywordradio.org

Wicked Good (Full Episode)

After our conversation about towns with extremely short names, many listeners wrote to tell us about Why, Arizona. Others pointed out that there are towns called Ely in Iowa, Minnesota, and Nevada. Other super-short appellations include Rye, New York, along with Zap, North Dakota, and Man, West Virginia. Shorter still is the name of Ai, Ohio, with a population of just over 600. http://waywordradio.org

1653-Intro-Towns-With-Short-Names-Followup

Quiz Guy John Chaneski is back with another "Take-Off" game in which the object is to take one letter from a word suggested by a clue to form another word. In this case, the letter that's to be taken off will always be an initial R. For example, what two words are suggested by the sentence He's a star pitcher, but he really can't run that fast? http://waywordradio.org

1653-Word-Quiz-Take-Off

So many books and so little time--it's a challenge to choose what to read next! It helps to remember that so-called "reading mortality" is a fact of life--you'll never get to them all, but you can curate your own to-read list that speaks specifically to you. Plus, the sneaky story behind the expression slip someone a mickey, and a new word for walking your dog: Let's go on a sniffari! And: favorite first lines of books, Bohemian, a brain teaser about song titles, how to pronounce aioli, jo-jo potatoes, a cool million, and more. http://waywordradio.org

A Cool Million (Full Episode)

How did the term Bohemian come to be associated with literary and artistic nonconformists who live outside mainstream society? In the early 19th century, the French term La bohème was applied to the Romani people, also known as the Roma, a traditionally itinerant people who originated in Northern India, and who arrived in France via Bohemia, now part of the modern Czech Republic. The 1851 book Scènes de la vie de bohème or Scenes of Bohemian Life (Bookshop|Amazon) romanticized the life of an impoverished seamstress and her artist friends, and inspired Giacomo Puccini's opera La bohème, which in turn helped inspire the modern musical RENT and its show-stopping number La vie bohème. http://waywordradio.org

1654-Caller-Brian-Bohemian

While reading Great Expectations (Bookshop|Amazon) by Charles Dickens, a listener in Arlington, Texas, is surprised when one of the characters inherits some money, which Dickens describes as a cool four thousand. Were they really using cool that way back then? When used to describe large quantities of money, cool emphasizes that this impressive number totals at least that amount. http://waywordradio.org

1654-Caller-Matthew-A-Cool-Million

Rich, an audiobook narrator from Tucson, Arizona, wonders how lexicographers decide which pronunciations are preferred. He specifically wonders about pronouncing the word aioli. http://waywordradio.org

1654-Caller-Rich-Aioli-Pronunciation

Given the fact of reading mortality--the awareness that it's physically impossible to read all the books we'd like to--what's the best way to choose your next book? Maryanne Wolf wrestles with modern challenges to doing so in Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World (Bookshop|Amazon). http://waywordradio.org

1654-Caller-Siri-Managing-Your-Reading

What makes a great first line of a book? How do the best authors put together an initial sentence that draws you in and makes you want to read more? We're talking about the openings of such novels as George Orwell's 1984 (Bookshop|Amazon), E.B. White's 
Charlotte's Web (Bookshop|Amazon) and Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (Bookshop|Amazon). As writer Alice McDermott observes in her essay collection What About the Baby?: Some Thoughts on the Art of Fiction (Bookshop|Amazon), the most compelling first lines convey a sense of authority and the idea that you can relax into a story told with confidence and verve. http://waywordradio.org

1654-Intro-Great-Book-First-Lines

How could you stop reading after a novel that begins like this? I had this story from one who had no business to tell me, or to any other. That's the first line of Tarzan of the Apes (Bookshop|Amazon) by Edgar Rice Burroughs. http://waywordradio.org

1654-Tarzan-First-Line

Samantha Harvey's novel Orbital is a sensuous, exhilarating meditation about the strangeness of life on a space station, with its mix of tedious tasks and jaw-dropping views. And: a musician who rode the rails in his youth shares the slang he picked up along the way. For example, the word spanging is a blend of the words spare and changing, and means "panhandling." Plus, what does the doggie say? The sound of a dog barking is often written as Bow wow. But why? Doesn't barking sound more like ruff ruff? Plus, slang on the ski slopes, boodling, a jazzy pangram, larruping good food, avoir le moral dans les chaussettes, a quiz about puzzling store names, ride or die, and a clever answer for when someone inquires as to how you're doing. http://waywordradio.org

Real Corker (Full Episode)

A member of the ski patrol at Vermont's Sugarbush Resort shares some workplace slang. Boilerplate denotes hard-packed snow with a ruffled pattern that makes skis chatter, death cookies are random chunks that could cause an accident, and escargot refers to slowpokes still on the mountain at the end of the day. http://waywordradio.org

1655-Intro-Ski-Patrol-Slang

Quiz Guy John Chaneski has been shopping at stores with misleading names. For example,he might buy baked goods from a bakery, but if he were to visit a store that sells flying mammals, he might assume it has something to do with power cells. What kind of "store" would that be? http://waywordradio.org

1655-Word-Quiz-False-Stores

A baby's first word is often a cherished milestone, but some cultures pay more attention to other firsts, like a baby's first laugh. A fascinating new book by a linguist examines language at the beginning and the end of life. Plus, the expression "Murphy's Law" reflects the idea that "anything that can go wrong will go wrong. But is this term a slur against the Irish? And an old word for new life: the verb to whicken involves daylight hours growing longer in springtime. Also, breard, honour bright and honour bright, the long history of groceries, a brain teaser about Pig Latin, sea painter, give someone down the road, give someone down the banks, a different way to write AI, plurale tantem, and how to pronounce rhetoric. http://waywordradio.org

Honor Bright (Full Episode)

A Winter Dictionary (Bookshop|Amazon) by Paul Anthony Jones includes some words to lift your spirits. The verb whicken involves the lengthening of days in springtime, a variant of quicken, meaning "come to life." Another word, breard, is an old term that means "the first shoots of a plant visible above the earth." Jones is also a big fan of the uplifting word respair. http://waywordradio.org

1656-Intro-A-Winter-Dictionary

The new book Bye Bye I Love You: The Story of Our First and Last Words (Bookshop|Amazon) by linguist Michael Erard is a deeply researched, often intensely personal exploration of the ways people communicate at both the beginning and end of life. http://waywordradio.org

1656-Lex-Bag-Bye-Bye-I-Love-You

Quiz Guy John Chaneski's puzzle this week involves Pig Latin, a.k.a. Ig-pay Atin-lay. One of two answers to each clue is a regular English word, and the other is its Pig Latin version. For example, what regular English word and its Pig Latin version are suggested by the definitions "having started and in progress" and "a feeling of surprise mixed with admiration"? http://waywordradio.org

1656-Word-Quiz-Pig-Latin

In the 1920's, Americans were warned of a new danger sweeping across the country. This menace that harmed people's health, ruined minds, and threatened marriages. The culprit? The national obsession with a new form of entertainment: crossword puzzles. Plus: why are accountants referred to as bean counters? And an old-fashioned way to describe a noisy, new restaurant: You can't hear your ears in this place! Also, alcoholic, vacuum vs. sweeper, swarping and sworping, hove and heave, a quiz about funny surnames, objet trouvé, Wunderkammer, a punny school mascot, and debubiate. http://waywordradio.org

Bean Counting (Full Episode)

An alcoholic who's been sober for 29 years wonders if she's overly sensitive to the terms non-alcoholic and alcohol-free being used with reference to food and drink. The problem is that alcoholic has more than one meaning. It can refer to someone who is addicted to alcohol, but it can also describe a substance that contains alcohol. Compounding the problem, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has its own definitions of alcoholic and non-alcoholic, and the word non-alcohol is used as an adjective in the world of science and chemistry. http://waywordradio.org

1657-Caller-Jennifer-Non-Alcoholic

Rich in Jackson, Wyoming, is searching for a word for finding objects found in nature such as a pretty rock or driftwood or antlers, and then bringing them home to use as decoration. He tried looking for the German Natur, "nature," and Kunst, "art," but couldn't quite find what he wanted. Found object or found object art has been used for decades to denote these examples of beauty in unexpected places. Such an item might also be described with the French term objet trouvé, literally "found object." Such a design aesthetic might be described as biophilic, reflecting a love of nature, although that's more often used in the context of architecture, and the structure of a space and what architects the viewshed, the features seen through windows and apertures. In Japanese, shizen (自然) means "nature" or "naturalness," and more broadly English connotes "the unforced quality of something," such as found objects arranged intuitively. These ideas also call to mind the German Wunderkammer or "cabinet of curiosities." And speaking of gathering up random rocks to bring home, there's always leaverite. http://waywordradio.org

1657-Caller-Rich-Natural-Art

Thomas from Huntsville, Alabama, was baffled when his Ohio-born fiancée told him she was going to sweep the house, then proceeded to use a vacuum cleaner. Is she the only person who calls a vacuum cleaner a sweeper? http://waywordradio.org

1657-Caller-Thomas-Sweeper

Tracy in Beaufort, North Carolina, says her grandmother, aunts, and uncles used to try to calm down an upset or bossy person with Well, don't get astorperious! You might debubiate! In the work of Zora Neale Hurston and in Harlem Renaissance slang of the 1920s, the word astorperious, also spelled asterperious, means "haughty" or "stuck-up" or "snobby." It might be a combination of the name Astor, referring to the wealthy family, and imperious, or it might be a humorous adaptation of obstreperous, meaning "stubbornly defiant" or "aggressively boisterous." Debubiate is far less common, but may be another fanciful formation, perhaps meaning "to leave.". http://waywordradio.org

1657-Caller-Tracy-Astorperious-Debubiate

The mascot for Horace Mann Elementary School in Washington, D.C. is a centaur, that mythological creature that's half-man, half-equine. Say the name of the school several times quickly, and you'll see why. http://waywordradio.org

1657-Horace-Mann

The crossword clue is "Bread machine?" The answer has three letters. What is it? http://waywordradio.org

1657-Intro-Favorite-Crossword-Clues

One of Martha's favorite crossword clues has something to do with the 1960's Rock and Roll legends, The Beatles.

1657-John-To-Ringo

In the 1920s, a crossword-puzzle craze swept across the United States. The pastime became wildly popular, and even inspired a Broadway musical, Puzzles of 1925. The fad spread through Canada and England, and the Wimbledon Public Library even removed dictionaries from their reading room because of all the wear and tear from crossword devotees suffering from a bad case of cluemonia. http://waywordradio.org

1657-Lex-Bag-Crossword-Puzzle-Craze

The Texas Folklore Society's book The Best of Texas Folk and Folklore, 1916-1954 (Bookshop|Amazon) offers some wonderful browsing, including this saying to describe an environment that's too loud: You can’t hear your ears in this place! http://waywordradio.org

1657-Texas-Folklore

Family surnames often derive from occupations, locations, or physical characteristics, so Quiz Guy John Chaneski has crafted a puzzle about fictitious origins of people's last names. For example, many folks have farmers in their ancestry, but what Lord of the Rings actor probably had forebears who grew flowers? http://waywordradio.org

1657-Word-Quiz-Ficticious-Surnames

If you watch British police procedurals, you'll likely come across the term to grass someone, meaning "to inform on someone" or "to rat someone out." It’s a bit of British rhyming slang that originated with the 19th-century phrase to shop on someone. That gave us the noun shopper, which became grasshopper, and then got shortened to grass. http://waywordradio.org

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A listener in Omaha, Nebraska, says his mother always ends a phone conversation not with Goodbye, but 'Mbye. How common is that? http://waywordradio.org

1458-Caller-Chad-Mmmbye

A belly flower is a small low-growing flower you have to get down on the ground to see. http://waywordradio.org

1475-Belly-Flower

The saying Liar, liar pants on fire is part of a longer children's rhyme that's been around since 1841 or so. There are several different versions of what comes after the line Liar, liar, pants on fire, such as Hanging by a telephone wire / While you're there, cut your hair / And stick it down your underwear. A listener in Indianapolis, Indiana, reports finding other taglines, such as Stick your head in boiling water, and the milder Wash your face in dirty water. http://waywordradio.org

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All the individual segments from A Way with Words' season 2011-2012.

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1323-CallerMatt-IfTheCreekDon'tRise

All segments from all episodes of the 2008-2009 season of A Way with Words.

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1330-CallerJoanna-EnglishWords.mp3

A Way with Words is a fun and funny public radio program about language examined through history, culture, and family. Its mission is to change the way you think about language. The program is heard by broadcast and podcast across the United States and around the world by more than a quarter-million listeners each week. It's produced by Wayword, Inc., a nonprofit whose mission is to promote lifelong learning, better human communication, and the value of a thing well-said or well-written. Call or write with your language questions at any time: (877) 929-9673 (toll-free in the US and Canada) or just email us: words@waywordradio.org.

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