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)

If you're in a book club, how do you decide what books to read? There are lots of different ways, depending on your group's goals. And is it ever wise to correct someone who mispronounces a word? Sometimes you have to decide if it's better to be right--or simply get along. Plus, some research suggests that when presented with photos from nature, humans naturally focus on animals instead of plants. Botanists even have a term for this tendency: plant blindness. Also, tight as a drum, a funny quiz about slightly altered Stephen King titles, sweet spot, lemniscate, kehrätä, mais garde donc, fourth-person pronouns, meronymy, shambles, semantic bleaching, opening lines of  Turkish fairy tales, and the business end. http://waywordradio.org

A Way With Words

Sweet Spot (Full Episode)

Christine in Denver, Colorado, is pondering the etiquette of correcting someone's pronunciation. How do you approach knowing the actual pronunciation of a word, when it's not the most common one? For example, Christine learned that the name of the Japanese clothing store Uniqlo is pronounced YOO-ni-kloh, but some people she knows call it yoo-NEEK-loh. Is it kinder to offer a gentle correction, or should you adopt what you know is the wrong pronunciation in order to be agreeable? http://waywordradio.org

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Dan from Jacksonville, Florida, grew up in South Louisiana, where speakers of Cajun French say Garde de donc! to mean "Well, would you look at that!" or "Can you believe this?" The phrase is used to point out something foolish or surprising. The same idea may be rendered as Mais garde donc or Garde donc or Garde mais donc, the garde coming from the French word meaning "look at" and the donc meaning "there." It's unrelated to the term gaga, which originates in French hospital slang gâteux, referring to someone who lacks all their faculties. http://waywordradio.org

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Gary in Loris, South Carolina, started listening to this show on the public radio station WHQR, which broadcasts from Wilmington, North Carolina. Then he realized that because of his location, he could also pick up the show through South Carolina Public Broadcasting. That got Gary wondering about the term sweet spot, meaning "the ideal location." Sweet spot is used in many different sports contexts, but the earliest uses are in golf, referring to the spot on the head of a golf club that has the greatest effect on the ball. http://waywordradio.org

1630-Caller-Gary-Sweet-Spot

The expression tight as a tick is inspired by the idea of being full-to-bursting, like one of those insects when it's engorged with blood. Tight as a tick can also describe someone who's quite drunk or very miserly. Other phrases that connote extreme tightness are tight as a drum and tight as a duck's butt. http://waywordradio.org

1630-Caller-Laura-Tight-As-A-Tick

Mav in Madison, Wisconsin, has heard content creators on platforms like YouTube and Twitch address their viewers collectively with the word chat, as in Chat, is this real? and Do you see this, chat? She's heard some people describe chat used in this way as a fourth-person pronoun. Is that correct? No, it's simply a vocative use of the noun, much the same way one might address one's audience or listeners or readers. The word gamers is increasingly used in the same way, such as YouTube videos in which the speaker greets viewers with Hi, gamers!
This usage of part of something to indicate the whole--in this case, the whole experience of streaming--is a form of meronomy, as in nice wheels to mean "nice car," even though the phrase alludes to only part of the vehicle. Another example of a meronym is boots on the ground, which denotes actual service members on the ground, not just their footwear. http://waywordradio.org

1630-Caller-Mav-Chat

Sean in New York City is curious about the expression the business end, as in the business end of a gun. It's simply "the end of an object that fulfills its function or purpose," such as the business end of a shovel, the business end of a nail, the business end of a stick, the business end of a snake, and the business end of a wasp. In addition, the term business can mean "difficulty" or "fuss" or "bother," as in to give someone the business which means "to give someone a hard time." http://waywordradio.org

1630-Caller-Sean-The-Business-End

If you're in a book club, how do you decide what books to read? In some groups, everyone takes turns choosing a book. In others, they take a vote. Others encourage everyone to read a different book and then report on it to the group. Emily Drabinski, president of the American Library Association, is in a group that reads 50 books a year, choosing from a list that includes "a book with a word or phrase that describes you in the title," "a book with a color in the title, "a book you first heard about in social media," and other suggestions. These broad categories make for reading that's invigorating, mind-expanding, and serendipitous. http://waywordradio.org

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Some research suggests that photos of animals tend to capture the attention of humans more readily than photos of plants. Botanists even have a term for "the inability to see or notice the plants in one's own environment." They call it plant blindness. http://waywordradio.org

1630-Plant-Blindness

Quiz Guy John Chaneski has been reading the novels of author Stephen King's annoying doppelganger, Stephen Kong, whose titles are like those of King's, with the exception of one letter. For example, Kong's first novel recalls the harsh high school experience and terrible prom of the author of Peter Pan (Bookshop|Amazon).What's that book called? http://waywordradio.org

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Quiz Guy John Chaneski has been puzzling over metaphors that involve an action performed on a noun. For example, say he's writing an essay and suddenly gets some new ideas that inspire him. It's not literally that he was traveling in a car that was suddenly reoriented 90 degrees and is now traveling on a new street. But what, metaphorically, would you say John did? http://waywordradio.org

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Quiz Guy John Chaneski presents a version of cryptic crosswords: double-definition clues for four-letter words. For example, what might the answer be if a punny crossword clue is "Sad feathers"? http://waywordradio.org

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People are forever saying that we live in one age or another, such as the Space Age or the Internet Age, which inspired Quiz Guy John Chaneski to create a Puzzle for the Ages. Imagine a world where people misunderstand words that end in -age, so someone needs to set them straight. For example, imagine someone going on and on about how we live in an age that's untidy:  "Everywhere you look there are clothes on the floor, dishes in the sink, truly we live in this kind of age." A more rational person then explains that the other misunderstood a word that ends in -age. What's the word? http://waywordradio.org

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If you're going up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire, then you're going up to bed. http://waywordradio.org

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An elementary music teacher in Cheyenne, Wyoming, reports that on a cold and windy day, one of her three-year-old students declared that she wished they were all on a sandy beach where they could change into their zucchinis. It was clearly a teachable moment where she could explain that such a swimsuit is actually called a bikini. http://waywordradio.org

1634-Zucchini-Bikini

Why is an insulated sleeve for a beverage called a koozie? Any relation to a tea cozy used to keep a teapot warm? In Australia, a coozie is often called a stubby holder, a stubby or stubbie being "a short bottle of beer." The coozie was originally patented with the trade name Koozie. http://waywordradio.org

1635-Caller-Jay-Koozie

Mary Lou is a former newspaper reporter in Memphis, Tennessee. One of her editors used to say he was off to the salt mines, meaning he was headed to do some challenging work. That expression is a reference to the grim practice of sending prisoners off to work in literal salt mines in Siberia. Through the linguistic process known as amelioration, that expression lost its original, extremely negative sense over time. Mary Lou is also curious about the old practice of adding #30# at the bottom of a story to indicate its end. There are many proposed explanations for this, going back to the 19th century. The most likely explanation connects this notation to a code outlined in 1864 in Orrin Wood's Plan of Telegraphic Instruction, where the number 30 was the telegraphic code meaning finis, meaning "end" or "conclusion." http://waywordradio.org

1635-Caller-Mary-Lou-Off-To-The-Salt-Mine

Mike in Glasgow, Kentucky, wonders about a catchphrase used in British comedies: I go to the foot of the stairs. The Oxford Dictionary of Catchphrases (Bookshop|Amazon) compiled by Anna Farkas and several books by catchphrase collector Nigel Rees both point to a comedy radio series that ran from 1939-1949 called "It's That Man Again." The phrase suggests that the speaker has been taken by surprise and must retire from polite company for one purpose or another. http://waywordradio.org

1635-Caller-Mike-I-Go-To-The-Foot-Of-The-Stairs

The expression You look like death eating on a Nab means "You look terrible." It's a humorous elaboration of the idea of death, which refers to death consuming a dry, salty, peanut-butter-filled snack made by the Nabisco company. The more common phrase is You look like death eating a cracker. Variations include like death on toast and the simile Ralph Ellison used in Invisible Man (Bookshop|Amazon), like death eating a sandwich. http://waywordradio.org

1635-Caller-Ollie-Death-On-A-Nab

Journalist Bianca Bosker infiltrated the world of contemporary art and wrote about it in her book Get the Picture: A Mind-Bending Journey Among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How to See (Bookshop|Amazon), often with hilarious results. She describes the lexicon of art curators, whose language is peppered with such words as indexicality, iconicity, and durational, and observes,"Art devotees spoke like they were trapped in dictionaries and being forced to chew their way out." http://waywordradio.org

1635-Contemporary-Art-Jargon

After an international team of scientists and staffers spent six months at a research station in Antarctica, their accents changed ever so slightly, according to an acoustic analysis by German researchers. The slang terms they shared include dingle, which described "clear weather," as in a dingle day, and electric soup, meaning "fortified wine." http://waywordradio.org

1635-Intro-Electric-Soup

What's the difference between ethics and morality? Between a proverb and an adage? Eli Burnstein's Dictionary of Fine Distinctions: Nuances, Niceties and Subtle Shades of Meaning ​​(Bookshop|Amazon) helps readers distinguish between such things. Linguist Anne Curzan's Says Who?: A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares About Words (Bookshop|Amazon) is a helpful, highly readable summary for anyone who wants to understand how linguists think about language. http://waywordradio.org

1635-Lex-Bag-Book-Recommendations

Smoko is slang for "a cigarette break." It's used in Australia and also at a British research station in Antarctica. http://waywordradio.org

1635-Smoko

Stravenue is a portmanteau of street and avenue, and is used in Tucson, Arizona, to refer to a diagonal road between east-west streets and north-south avenues. Similarly, a stroad is a combination of street and road. http://waywordradio.org

1635-Stravenue

Quiz Guy John Chaneski has crafted a quiz involving a polysyllabic word followed by another word that repeats the last of those syllables twice. For example, suppose the clue is: "When playing a simple game with a toddler, it's a real faux pas to forget to reveal your face again." What's a five-syllable term for that kind of mistake? http://waywordradio.org

1635-Word-Quiz-Repeats

Salisbury steak is named for Dr. James H. Salisbury, who prescribed what he referred to as muscle pulp of beef for Civil War soldiers suffering from so-called camp diarrhea. http://waywordradio.org

1485-Salisbury-Steak

The highly specialized vocabulary of people who work outdoors, like farmers and fishermen, can bring us closer to the natural world. Also, a woman who trains sled dogs discusses the words she uses to communicate with her animals. You may be surprised to hear that "Mush!" is not one of them! Finally, if you're getting ready to go rock climbing, you'll first want the beta--a word with roots in the technology of video recording. Plus church key, browse line, smeuse, nitnoy, mommick, zawn, zwer, boom dog, and I think my pig is whistling. http://waywordradio.org

A Way with Words

Gee and Haw (Full Episode)

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

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1239-Intro-TextMessaging

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1239-CallerRobert-ReesesWords

1239-Filler-Texting1

1239-CallerRiza-Recombobulation

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1239-CallerLarry-ToeNames1

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A Kazahk saying that literally translates as I see the sun on your back means Thank you for being you. http://waywordradio.org

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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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