A Way With Words

Some people proudly embrace the label cancer survivor, while others feel that's not quite the right word. Is there a better term for someone who's battled cancer? Writers and listeners share the best sentence they've read all day. Plus, koofers and goombahs, Alfred Hitchcock and MacGuffins, why we put food in jars but call it canning, and why ring the door with your elbow means BYOB.

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Ever read a sentence that's so good, you just have to look up from the page to let it sink in? Grant offers one from Ezra Pound: "The book should be a ball of light in one's hands."

When someone says, He didn't lick that off the grass, it means he's inherited a behavior from relatives or picked it up from those around them. This phrase is particularly common in Northern Ireland.

Don't bother showing up to a party unless you're ringing the doorbell with your elbow. In other words, BYOB.

Brian from Edison, New Jersey, is pondering this linguistic mystery: The Mid-Atlantic convenience store chain Wawa has a goose as its logo. The Algonquin term for "goose" is wawa, and the French for "goose" is oie, pronounced "wah." Is there a connection between the French and Native American terms? It's probably just another example from a long list of linguistic coincidences resulting from the limited amount of vocal sounds we can make.

Our Quiz Guy Greg Pliska invites us to play Categorical Allies, a game of two-word pairs where the last two letters of the first word lend themselves to the start of the second, and both words fit into one category. For example, what word might follow the name Job? Or the title A Christmas Carol?

Say you've been busy all semester throwing a Frisbee and drinking juice out of a funnel, and now it's finals week. How are you going to study? Just get yourself a koofer! These old tests, which some universities keep around in their libraries, can be great guides in prepping for a current test. Virginia Tech alums claim the term originated there in the early 1940s. In any case, many universities now have koofers, and many are available online at koofers.com.

Why do we call it canning if we're putting stuff in glass jars? The answer has to do with when the technique was discovered. The process of canning came about in the late 1700s, when thin glass jars were used. Factories soon switched to metal cans because they were durable and better for shipping. But after Mason jars came about in the mid-1800s, the process of preserving things at home kept the name canning.

Sam Anderson, a writer for The New York Times Magazine, tweets the best sentence he reads each day, like this from D.H. Lawrence describing the affection of Italians: "They pour themselves one over the other like so much melted butter over parsnips."

Should people living with cancer be referred to as cancer survivors? Mary from Delafield, Wisconsin, a breast cancer survivor herself, doesn't like the term. Nor does Indiana University professor emerita Susan Gubar, who discusses this in an eloquent New York Times blog post. Many people living with cancer feel that the word survivor, which came into vogue in the early 90s, now seems inadequate. Some argue that having cancer shouldn't be their most important identifying feature. Others suggest calling themselves contenders or grits. Have a better idea?

Kevin Whitebaum of Oberlin, Ohio, has a favorite sentence from P.D. James's A Taste for Death: "The original tenants had been replaced by the transients of the city, the peripatetic young, sharing three to a room; unmarried mothers sharing social security; foreign students—a racial mix which, like some human kaleidoscope, was continually being shaken into new and brighter colours."

A while back, we talked about ishpy, a popular word among Nordic immigrants meaning something that a child shouldn't touch or put in their mouth. It turns out that lots of listeners with ancestors from Norway and Denmark know the term ishpy, along with ishie poo, ishta, and ish, all having to do with something disgusting or otherwise forbidden.

When is it okay to correct someone's grammar? Grant offers two rules: Correct someone only if they've asked you to, or if they're paying you to. Otherwise, telling someone they should've used I instead of me is just interrupt the conversation for no good reason.

Nick Greene, web editor for The Village Voice, tweeted, "Modern society's greatest failing has been letting Application defeat Appetizer in the War For What Can Be Called an App." There's always antipasti.

Goombah, sometimes spelled goomba, is a term for Italian-Americans that's sometimes used disparagingly. Physicians use the same word for the blobs on CT scans indicating a possible tumor, but this sense probably derives from the evil mushrooms in Super Mario Bros., known as goombas. The game was released in 1986, right about the same time that doctors picked up the term.

Here's a great sentence by Phil Jackson, tweeted by writer Sam Anderson: "I was 6'6" in high school ... arms so long I could sit in the backseat of a car and open both front doors at the same time."

A MacGuffin isn't the name of a breakfast sandwich, but it could be -- that is, if a movie involves characters trying to get that sandwich. The MacGuffin, also spelled McGuffin or maguffin, is any object in a film that drives the story forward, like the secret papers or the stolen necklace. Alfred Hitchcock made the MacGuffin famous, and explained it this way in a 1939 lecture at Columbia University: "It is the mechanical element that usually crops up in any story. In crook stories it is always the necklace and in spy stories it is always the papers. We just try to be a little more original."

Judy Schwartz from Dallas, Texas, sent us the best sentence she read all day. It's from William Zinsser's On Writing Well: "Clutter is the disease of American writing." Have a sentence that stopped you in your tracks? Send it our way.

This episode was hosted by Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett.
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Support for A Way with Words also comes from National University, which invites you to change your future today. More at http://www.nu.edu/.

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
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Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
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Copyright 2013, Wayword LLC.

You've been reading a book but you're just not into it. How do you quit it, guilt-free? How do you break up with a book? Also, what do you ask for when you go through the grocery checkout line: bag, sack, or something else? Plus, brung vs. brought, a swim swim, cuddywifters, pinstriped cookie-pushers, a road trip word game, and more.

FULL DETAILS

How do you know if it's time to break up with a book? You've into the book 50, maybe a 100 pages, but you're just not into it. Is there something wrong with quitting before the end? Tell us where you draw the line.

Let's say an expression you use really bothers your friends or coworkers. Maybe you end sentences with whatnot or etcetera, or you use um as a placeholder, and you want to stop doing it. Here's a tip: Enlist someone you trust, and have them police you, calling your attention to it every time you use that verbal crutch. It should cure you pretty quickly.

A while ago, we played a game involving aptronyms, those monikers that really fit their owners. For example, picture a guy holding a shovel standing next to a hole. His name might be Doug. But a Tennessee listener wrote to suggest another answer: the guy with the shovel might just as well be called Barry. Have a better aptronym to share?

If you say something's going downhill, does that mean things are getting better or worse? Here's the rule: if something's going downhill, it's getting worse, but if things are all downhill from here, they're getting better.

Remember Tom Swifties, those puns where the adverb matches the quote? How about this one: "I love reading Moby-Dick," Tom said superficially.

Our Puzzle Master John Chaneski has a game that should last through your longest road trip. It's a variation of “20 Questions” called “Animal, Mineral or Vegetable. “He gives you a word, and you have to find the animal, mineral or vegetable embedded in it. For example, which of those three things is contained in the word "soaking"?

Mike from Irving, Texas, has a co-worker who regularly uses brung instead of brought. Is it okay to say "he brung something"? Although the word brung isn't standard English, this dialectal variant has existed alongside brought for centuries. It appears in the informal phrase dance with the one what brung you (or who brung you or that brung you), which suggests the importance of being loyal.

“No bucks, no Buck Rogers,” made popular by the 1983 film The Right Stuff, has seen a renaissance in usage among pilots. That is, if you don't pay them what they believe they’re worth, they're not going to fly.

We got a call from Sarah in Dresden, Germany, who's applying to work for the State Department as foreign service officer. She was curious about an article that contained the term pinstriped cookie-pusher. According to William Safire's Political Dictionary, this bit of derogatory slang came into use in the 1920s to refer to diplomats who were perceived as soft or even effeminate. These men in pinstriped suits would attend receptions at embassies where they'd push cookies instead of paper.

If a waiter marks your date as a WW, you know you're in for a pricey bottle of wine. The wine whales, as they're called, take their name from the Vegas whale: those folks who play big at the tables, to the tune of hundreds of thousands or even millions.

Will, a listener from South Burlington, Vermont, says he always considered willy nilly to be his own special phrase. But he's realized over the years that its original meaning has been replaced. What was originated as will I, nill I or will he, nill he -- that is, with or without the will of someone -- has come to mean "haphazard." This transformation likely has to do with its rhyme.

If someone's a cuddywifter, are they a) a wine snob, b) left-handed, or c) a circus clown? Folks in Scotland and Northern England refer to left-handed people as cuddywifters, along with a host of other terms.

After re-reading Stephen Crane's short story The Open Boat, Martha is reminded of one of Crane's poems about perspective, known as A man saw a ball of gold in the sky.

If someone asks for their groceries in a bag, does that mean they want paper or plastic? For Jean-Patrick in Dallas, Texas, has had plenty of experience bagging groceries, and says his customers use the term bag specifically to mean the paper kind. We don't have evidence that there are different names for these containers in different parts of the country, but we'd love to hear from our listeners on this one.

When someone's going for a swim swim, it means they're doing it for real, laps and all. If they're going to a party, that's probably going to be more sedate than a party party. These are examples of what linguists call contrastive focus reduplication, in which we emphasize a term by reusing it, rather than tacking on another adjective. For example, you might just like someone, but then again you maybe you like like them.

When it comes to marriage, you've got to work with your OH—that is, your other half. Lexicographers for the Oxford English Dictionary are tracking this initialism, as well as DH, or dear husband, for possible inclusion in future editions.

I liked to died when that ol' toad-strangler crashed through the veranda! The Southernism liked to, also known as the counterfactual liketa, derives from the sense of like meaning "nearly." If you have some favorite regional language, please share it with us.

One of Kentucky's finest, Wendell Berry, wrote this in his poem "The Real Work": "It may be that when we no longer know what to do/ we have come to our real work." Indeed, a smooth life is often a boring life.

This episode was hosted by Grant Barrett and Martha Barnette, and produced by Stefanie Levine.
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Support for AWWW comes from The Ken Blanchard Companies, who mission since 1979 has been to unleash the power and potential of people and organizations everywhere. More about Ken Blanchard’s leadership development solutions at kenblanchard.com/leadership.

And from National University, which invites you to change your future today. More at http://www.nu.edu/.

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
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Copyright 2013, Wayword LLC.

First names like "Patience," "Hope," and "Charity" are inspired by worthy qualities. But how about "Be-courteous" or "Hate-evil"? The Puritans sometimes gave children such names hoping that their kids would live up to them. Also, even some feminists are discarding the name "feminist." Plus, reticent vs. reluctant, sherbet vs. sherbert, mosquitoes vs. lawyers, and a word for that feeling in your toes after a great kiss.

FULL DETAILS

Patience, Hope, and Charity are pretty ambitious things to name your children. But what about Hate-evil, Be-courteous, or Search-the-scriptures? Or Fight-the-good-fight-of-faith? Puritan parents sometimes gave their kids so as to encourage those qualities. They're called hortatory names, from the Latin for "encourage" or "urge."

What's the difference between a mosquito and a lawyer? One's a bloodsucking parasite, and the other's an insect. This bait-and-switch joke, like many good paraprosdokians, get their humor by going contrary to our expectations.

A debate has been raging within the Conductors Guild. Should that organization's name have an apostrophe? Most board members contend that for simplicity and clarity, the name should go without an apostrophe. The hosts concur.

That thing when someone kisses you so well that your toes curl up? It's called a foot pop.

Is it incorrect to say I could use a drink rather than I want a drink? A California man says his Italian partner claims this use of use is incorrect. It may be a verbal crutch, but it's still correct English.

Our Quiz Guy Greg Pliska feeds us a game of spoonerisms, or rhyming phrase pairs where the first sounds are swapped. For example, what do a stream of information in 140 characters and a better tailored suit have in common? Or how about a Michael Lewis book about baseball and a shopping destination for rabbits?

A caller from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, says that cops in Canada will often say to contact them on their shoe phones. The shoe phone comes from Maxwell Smart, the hapless hero of the 1960s sitcom Get Smart, who kept a phone on the sole of his shoe. The phrase has now come to refer to any surreptitiously placed phone.

Before the days of the Square, vendors had to run a credit card through rough, bulky machine called a knucklebuster that had the capacity to do just that.

Order in the court, the monkey wants to speak, the first one to speak is a monkey for a week! This children's rhyme appears in print in the 1950s, and Israel Kaplan mentions it in When I Was a Boy in Brooklyn, his take on growing up in New York in the 20s and 30s. Many of his rhymes were less tame.

The poet Marianne Moore was once asked to come up with car names for the Ford Motor Company, and if it wasn't for the genius of their own term, the Edsel, we could've been driving around in Resilient Bullets, Varsity Strokes, or Utopian Turtletops.

The term vegan was coined in 1944 by Donald Watson, the founder of the U.K. Vegan Society, who insisted that the original pronunciation was VEE-gin. However, some dictionaries now allow for other pronunciations, such as VAY-gin or even VEDJ-in.

If a phone in your shoe or your glasses isn't futuristic enough for you, check out morphees. They're smartphones and handheld gaming devices that can bend and change shapes.

Is it time for feminists to ditch the label feminist? Women's studies professor Abigail Rine is among those struggling with that question. She argues that conversations about feminist issues are often held up by discussions about the label itself, and its negative connotations in particular. Meanwhile, some are trying to replace the word patriarchy with kyriarchy, from the Greek for "lord" or "master" (as in Kyrie Eleison, or "Lord, have mercy) since matters of discrimination don't just fall along gender lines.

Sherbet is pronounced SHUR-bit. There's no r before the t, and there's no need to add one. If it still seems too complicated, you might just order ice cream or sorbet instead.

Noah Webster originally tried changing the spelling of hard ch words to begin with k, as in karacter, but the shift never caught on, as is usually the case with spelling reforms.

Is there a difference between reticent and reluctant? Reticent more specifically involves reluctance to speak--it comes from the Latin root meaning "silent," and is a relative of the word tacit--whereas you can be reluctant to do anything.

Say you're a novelist working on your magnum opus. While you're shuffling through the produce aisle, an idea strikes you and you can't stop thinking about it. That's what they call a plot bunny.

Lori from Swansboro, North Carolina, wonders about pure-T mommicked, which in many parts of the South and South Midlands means "confused." Its sense of "harrass, tease, impose upon" is particularly common in North Carolina. It apparently derives from the verb mammock, meaning to tear into pieces, actually shows up in Shakespeare's Coriolanus. The pure-T is a variant of pure-D, a euphemism for pure damned.

This past spring was a cold one, wasn't it? Some have taken to calling it February 90th.

This episode was hosted by Grant Barrett and Martha Barnette.
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Support for A Way with Words also comes from National University, which invites you to change your future today. More at http://www.nu.edu/.

And from The Ken Blanchard Companies, whose purpose is to make a leadership difference among executives, managers, and individuals in organizations everywhere. More about Ken Blanchard’s leadership training programs at kenblanchard.com/leadership.

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2012, Wayword LLC.

Everyone knows you don't start a sentence with "But." But why? We sort out the confusion over this little word. Also, how voice recognition technology is changing the way we think and write, and what English sounds like to foreigners. (Hint: It's not pretty.) Plus, where cockamamie comes from, oddly translated movie titles, trucker slang, patron vs. customer, hashtags, pungling, paralipsis, and more.

FULL DETAILS

Quiz time! Does pungle mean a) a baby platypus, or b) a verb meaning "to put down money."  It's the latter. The term pungle is most common in the Western United States. It comes from the Spanish pongale, an imperative meaning "put it down." For example, you might pungle down cash at a poker table or a checkout counter.

Michelle, a middle school teacher in Atlanta, Georgia, says her students believe they've invented a new word for "an injury received from a fist bump or dap." They say they created fistumba as a combination of fist and Zumba, the popular dance exercise. They're wondering how to improve their chances of spreading this new word, and they've been discussing the children's book Frindle, by Andrew Clements, which is about inventing and trying to popularize a new term.

"We don't want to dwell on the need for your donations, so we'll stop talking about how important they are." Rhetorical statements like this one, where the point is actually made by pretending to avoid it, is often called paralipsis or paraleipsis. The terms come from the Greek word meaning "to leave aside."

In truck driver slang, a bedbugger is "a moving van that hauls furniture." That's one example of trucker lingo that Martha picked up during her appearance on Wisconsin Public Radio's call-in program, The Ben Merens Show.

Kathleen from Hebron, Connecticut, is curious about the term hashtag. She associates it with the symbol #, which she calls a pound sign. When that symbol, also known as a hash mark, pound sign, doublecross, hatch mark, octothorpe, or number sign, is appended to clickable keywords, the whole thing is known as a hashtag. It's used on Twitter, among other places, to help label a message on a particular topic.

If you're a fan of yard sales, you'll love this game from Puzzle Guy John Chaneski. Suppose you go yard-saling, but only at the homes of famous people. The items you find there are all two-word rhymes. At the house of one powerful politician, for example, you find he's selling his flannel nightclothes. Can you guess what they're called?

Richard from San Diego, California, has a hard time believe that the term cockamamie doesn't derive from Yiddish. Although the word was adapted by Jewish immigrants in New York City to refer to transferable decals, it comes from French decalcomania. Cockamamie, or cockamamy, is now used to describe something wacky or ridiculous, and it's often heard among those familiar with Yiddish.

What film, when translated from its Spanish version, is known as An Expert in Fun? It's Ferris Bueller's Day Off! Now take a crack at decoding these two: Love without Stopovers, and Very Important Perros.

Suzie, who works at the Dallas Public Library, is wondering why librarians are being asked to refer to their patrons as customers. Does the word customer make consulting a library and borrowing books feel too much like a transaction? Eric Patridge, in his 1955 book The Concise Usage and Abusage, explains that you can have a patron of the arts, but not of a greengrocer or a bookmaker. What do you think people who use a library should be called?

Back in 1867 a newspaper in Nevada used the verb pungle to lovely effect: "All night the clouds pungled their fleecy treasure."

The modifier lamming or lammin', is used as an intensifier, as in "That container is lammin' full," meaning "That container is extremely full." There's a whole class of intensifying words like this in English, which have to do with the idea of hitting, banging, thumping, or striking. Another example: larrupin'.  The word lammin' in particular popped up in a bunch of cowboy novels after Zane Grey popularized the term in his books.

Do you listen to our show on an alligator radio? We're guessing not, since this bit of trucker slang refers to the CB radios that transmit a strong signal but are terrible for receiving. Like an alligator, they're all mouth and no ears.

Voice recording technology is making it easier than ever to dictate text rather than write it. Richard Powers, author of the 2006 National Book Award winner The Echo Maker, wrote most of that book by dictating it into a computer program. Of course, dictating to humans has been happening for centuries. John Milton is said to have dictated Paradise Lost to his daughters, and Mark Twain supposedly dictated much of his Autobiography. But as Powers explained in an essay, dictating to a computer changes the way one puts words on the page.

Every elementary school student is taught never to start a sentence with "But." But why? Teachers of young students often warn against beginning with "But" or "And" simply as a way of avoiding a verbal crutch. All mature writers develop an instinct for what tone they're going for, who their audience is, and what kind of style their content demands. But there's no universal rule against starting a sentence with the word "but."

David, a lawyer from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, subscribes to the Lexis Legal News Brief, and wonders about the connection between lex meaning "law," and the lex which refers to "words." While lexis refers to the total stock of words in a language, lexicon means the vocabulary of an individual or a specific branch of knowledge. They all come from an ancient root leg-, having to do with the idea of "collecting" or "gathering," which also gives us the suffix -logy, as in the study of something.

If you're driving an 18-wheeler and want to warn fellow truckers about a piece of blown tire lying in the middle of the road, you'd tell them to watch out for the alligator. Come to think of it, the crocodilian reptile and the rubber remnant do share a passing resemblance.

Kids often imitate French or Chinese speakers without knowing the language,. But have you ever tried to imitate the English language, or speak fake English? There are lots of YouTube videos that give an idea of what English sounds like to native speakers of foreign languages.

This episode was hosted by Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett and produced by Stefanie Levine.

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Support for AWWW comes from The Ken Blanchard Companies, who mission since 1979 has been to unleash the power and potential of people and organizations everywhere.  More about Ken Blanchard’s leadership development solutions at kenblanchard.com/leadership.


Support for A Way with Words also comes from National University, which invites you to change your future today. More at http://www.nu.edu/.

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

Email: words@waywordradio.org

Phone:
United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673
London +44 20 7193 2113
Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771

Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate
Site: http://waywordradio.org/
Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/
Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/
Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/
Skype: skype://waywordradio

Copyright 2012, Wayword LLC.

What do you call a guy with a bald pate? A chrome dome? Maybe the lucky fellow is sporting a solar panel for a sex machine. Also, which would you rather open: a can of worms or Pandora's Box? Plus, ordinary vs. ornery, versing vs. versus, dishwater vs. ditchwater, the copyediting term stet, still hunts, and doozies. And if someone's a phony, is he a four-flusher or a floor-flusher? Maybe he's also a piece of work.

FULL DETAILS

Has anyone collected the stuff bald people say? How about a busy road grows no grass, or God only made so many perfect heads—the rest he covered in hair. Jorge Luis Borges deemed the 1982 Falklands War between the UK and Argentina as "a fight between two bald men over a comb."

If someone seems too good to be true, he may be a four-flusher. This term for "a fake" or "a phony" comes from the poker slang four-flusher, meaning someone who has four cards of a suit but not yet the full flush. Some people confuse the term as floor-flusher, like in the 1954 Popeye cartoon about a plumbing mishap that makes humorous use of this expression.

Is someone dull as ditchwater or dishwater? The more common phrase, which came into use much earlier, is ditchwater.

What do you call the rear compartment of a station wagon or minivan? Many know it as the way back, not to be confused with the regular back, which is more likely to have seat belts.

Who knows if Harry means "hairy," but we do know that the name Calvin means "bald." It derives from the Latin calvus, which means the same thing, and is also the root of the term Calvary.

Quiz Guy John Chaneski plays master of ceremonies for the Miss Word Pageant, a popularity contest for words based on their Google search frequency. For example, between bacon, lettuce and tomato, bacon takes the prize by far for most Google hits, while lettuce brings up the rear. What’d lettuce do for the talent portion?

What's the difference between Pandora's box and a can of worms? In Greek myth, the contents of the fateful box belonging to Pandora (literally, "all gifts" in ancient Greek) were a mystery. WIth a can of worms, on the other hand, you know the kind of tangled, unpleasant mess you're in for. It's worms.

Does the possessive “s” go at the end of a proper name ending in “s”? What's the possessive of  a name like James -- James' or James's? Either's correct, depending on your style guide. The AP Stylebook says you just use an apostrophe, but others say to add the “s”. Your best bet is to choose a style and then be consistent.

The term callow goes back to Old English calu, meaning "bald." The original sense of callow referred to young birds lacking feathers on their heads, then referred to a young man's down cheek, and eventually came to mean "youthful" or "immature."

The word stet was borrowed from the Latin word spelled the same way, which translates "let it stand." Stet is commonly used by writers and editors to indicate that something should remain as written, especially after a correction has been suggested.

Why do we refer to a draw in tic-tac-toe as a cat's game? Throughout the history of the game, cats have been associated with it. In some Spanish-speaking countries, for example, it's known as gato, or "cat."

Photos and tests from the Mars Rover show an abundance of hematite, a dark red mineral that takes its name from the Greek word haima, meaning "blood." Another mineral, goethite, is named for the German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, an amateur geologist whose collection of 18,000 minerals was famous throughout Europe.

Is versing, meaning "to compete against someone," a real verb? In the past thirty years, this term has grown in popularity because versus, when spoken, sounds like a conjugated verb. So youngsters especially will talk about one team getting ready to verse another. Similar things happened with misunderstanding the plural forms of kudos (in ancient Greek, "glory") and biceps (literally, "two-headed") — both of those words were originally singular.

To sell woof tickets, or wolf tickets, is African-American slang meaning "to threaten in a boastful manner."  Geneva Smitherman, a professor at Michigan State University who's studied the term, believes it has its origins in the idea of a dog barking uselessly.

The term doozie, which refers to something good or first rate, may derive from daisy, as in the flower, sometimes considered an example of excellence. It might also have to do with the Italian actress Eleanora Duse, who toured the States in the 1890s.

Goethe wasn't all about the minerals. He's also quoted as saying, "One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words." Goethe also said, "Everything is simpler than one can imagine and yet complicated and intertwined beyond comprehension," which seems quite appropriate for a poet whose name graces rocks on another planet.

What does it mean if someone's on a still hunt? This hunting term, for when you're walking quietly to find prey, has been conscripted by the political world to refer to certain kinds of campaign strategies.

Can ordinary also mean "crude" or "crass"? This usage was more common in previous generations, but it is acceptable. It's also the source of ornery, meaning "combative" or "crotchety."

If someone's a piece of work, they're a real pain in the rear. Merriam-Webster defines a piece of work as "a complicated, difficult, or eccentric person." The expression appears to derive  from Hamlet.

This episode was hosted by Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett.
....

Support for A Way with Words also comes from National University, which invites you to change your future today. More at http://www.nu.edu/.

And from The Ken Blanchard Companies, whose purpose is to make a leadership difference among executives, managers, and individuals in organizations everywhere. More about Ken Blanchard’s leadership training programs at kenblanchard.com/leadership.

--

A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate

Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:

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