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KPBS A Way with Words

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Language: English
Category: Variety / Public Radio
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A Conversation with Roy Blount Jr. - 29 April 2009
Humorist Roy Blount Jr. sits down with Grant for a conversation about the controversy over writers' rights and the Amazon Kindle 2. As president of the Authors Guild, Blount has argued that writers whose work is featured on the Kindle 2 should earn extra royalties because its text-to-speech feature essentially turns written works into audiobooks. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/opinion/25blount.htmlBlount also discusses his own recent book, Alphabet Juice, talks about 'sonicky' words and noodl...

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[ Wed, 29 Apr 2009 04:01:00 GMT ]


Cut to the Chase - 27 April 2009
[This episode first aired December 19, 2008.]There's nothing like an oddly phrased headline to brighten your day. How about 'Actor Sent to Jail for Not Finishing Sentence'? Or 'Queen Mary Having Bottom Scraped'? Same for signs that make you do a double take, like 'Senior Citizens! Buy One, Get One Free.' A San Diego caller shares a couple of her favorite oddly worded signs, and the hosts mention a few of their own.If someone's driving you bonkers, you'd be forgiven for grumbling, 'He's such a pi...

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[ Mon, 27 Apr 2009 04:01:00 GMT ]


Macaroni and Gravy? - 23 April 2009
This week, we're going through the e-mail bag. Here's a savory, sensuous one. It's from Stacey in Boulder, Colorado. Stacey grew up out West, but says she spent summers and Christmases at the home of her maternal grandparents, just north of New York City. 'This side of my family,' she writes, 'is unapologetically Italian. For me, a highlight of every visit was the night of arrival. My grandma would welcome us home with a big pot of gravy. After the day-long trip to get there, Stacey writes, 'not...

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[ Thu, 23 Apr 2009 04:01:00 GMT ]


Almost Up to Possible - 20 April 2009
[This episode originally aired December 13, 2008.]The second edition of the Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus is chock-full of synonyms, of course, but what makes it special are the essays and usage notes by authors such as Simon Winchester, David Lehman, Zadie Smith, and David Foster Wallace. Grant talks about his experience working as an editor on this volume--and what David Foster Wallace taught him about language. We all know that the 2008 presidential election was historic. But was it 'an ...

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[ Mon, 20 Apr 2009 04:01:00 GMT ]


What's a Hobson's Choice? - 15 April 2009
What's a 'Hobson's Choice'?If you're facing a Hobson's choice, you don't really have much to choose from. The phrase describes a situation in which your options are either to take what's offered, or else take nothing at all. Martha offers some choice words about the origin of this term. Recently a friend emailed to ask about a curious phrase she'd run across. A newspaper columnist argued that when it comes to fixing the economy, the Obama administration faces a Hobson's choice. In other words, t...

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[ Wed, 15 Apr 2009 13:05:00 GMT ]


Like a Duck on a June Bug - 13 Apr. 2009
Why are the names of cars so unimaginative? Grant argues that auto manufacturers might take inspiration from 'ornithology' to build a better car name. (Then again, would you be any less aggravated if you were rear-ended by a 'lazuli bunting'?) Also this week, why do so many young folks 'pepper their speech with the word 'like,' and what, if anything, can be done about it? All that, plus Luddites, chicken bog, a ducks on June bug, and the possible origins of the phrase to get one's goat.Ever been...

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[ Mon, 13 Apr 2009 04:01:00 GMT ]


Dust Bunnies and Ghost Turds - 6 April 2009
[This episode was first aired November 22, 2008.]Feeling fankled? It's a Scots English word that means 'messed up' or 'confused.' In this week's episode, Grant and Martha also discuss a whole litter of synonyms for 'dust bunny,' a slew of different terms for the piece of playground equipment you slide on, and the proper way to refer to a baby platypus.When you were growing up, what did you call that piece of playground equipment that you climb up and then slide down? A former New Jersey resident...

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[ Mon, 6 Apr 2009 04:01:00 GMT ]


What the Cluck? (Part 2) - 1 April 2009
What The Cluck, Part 2What does the expression egg on have to do with chickens? Nothing, actually. Martha explains why, and tells the story of how the term curate's egg came to mean 'something with both good and bad characteristics.'Last week I told you about a letter from Randy in San Diego. He's the guy who's raising three chickens in his backyard. That got him wondering about expressions in English involving chicken. For example, what about 'to egg someone on'?Randy says he gave his trio of h...

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[ Wed, 1 Apr 2009 04:01:00 GMT ]


Moded, Corroded, Your Booty Exploded - 30 Mar. 2009
Why is it that what you say to your family and what they hear are different? If you say 'no,' your child hears 'maybe,' and if you say 'maybe,' she hears 'ask again and again, and yes is just around the corner.' Grant and Martha discuss ways that families communicate and miscommunicate. Also in this episode: the West Coast exclamation 'moded!,' the Navy expression 'turn to,' how to pronounce 'llama,' what it means if someone says your car is 'banjaxed,' and more.Grab some popcorn, slip into a fo...

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[ Mon, 30 Mar 2009 04:01:00 GMT ]


What the Cluck? - 25 March 2009
This week, we received an email from Randy in San Diego. Randy writes: 'I recently got myself three hens for the back yard as a hobby that I thought my kids would enjoy. I highly recommend backyard chickens, by the way â theyâre better than television. During the months we have had these chickens, around I have had an opportunity to closely observe their behavior. This has me wondering about all the expressions and words we have in the U.S. related to chickens.'Great question, Randy. For start...

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[ Wed, 25 Mar 2009 04:01:00 GMT ]


I, For One, Welcome Our New Robot Overlords - 23 March 2009
Sure, there's 'Grandma' and 'Grampa,' but there's also 'Gammy,' 'Bumpy,' 'Dadoo,' 'Gre-Gre,' 'Kiki,' 'Kerkel,' 'Monga,' 'Nee-Nee,' 'Pots,' 'Rah-Rah' and 'Woo-Woo.' Martha and Grant talk about the endlessly inventive names grandchildren call their grandparents.'They also discuss 'Seinfeldisms,' 'couch potatoes,' and where in the world your car can and will be stopped by robots. Really!You've heard people describe something momentous as 'a watershed moment' in history. What is a watershed, exactly...

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[ Mon, 23 Mar 2009 04:01:00 GMT ]


Stem-winding and Spellbinding Sentences Minicast - 18 March 2009
Recently The New Yorker magazine ran a profile of the writer David Foster Wallace, who died last year at the age of 46. The article included a line that I think Foster himself might have appreciated. It went like this: 'He was known for endlessly fracturing narratives and for stem-winding sentences adorned with footnotes that were themselves stem-winders.' So what's a stem-winder?Stem-winder goes back to the mid-19th century. It refers to an invention that was as nifty and state-of-the-art then ...

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[ Wed, 18 Mar 2009 04:01:00 GMT ]


A Walk Spoiled But Our Lie is Good - 16 March 2009
If English isn't your first language, there are lots of ways to learn it, such as memorizing Barack Obama's speech to the 2004 Democratic Convention. Martha and Grant talk about some of the unusual ways foreigners are learning to speak English. Also, a golfer wonders if it's ever proper to say 'I'm going golfing' rather than 'I'm going to play golf.' And they share an easy way to remember the difference between 'lie' and 'lay.'Here's the The New Yorker article about Crazy English that Grant ment...

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[ Mon, 16 Mar 2009 04:01:00 GMT ]


Leapin' Lexical Inventions - 11 March 2009
Martha explains how experiments with dead frogs and live wires led to the invention of the battery, and inspired a couple of familiar English words.I had to change the batteries in my flashlight the other day, and that makes think, as it always does, of Luigi Galvani. No, really, it does. Let me explain: Galvani was an 18th-century Italian physician and physicist whose experiments accidentally paved the way for modern batteries.The focus of his research? Galvani experimented with dead frogs and ...

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[ Wed, 11 Mar 2009 04:01:00 GMT ]


Elvis in a Cheese Sandwich - 9 March 2009
[Portions of this episode were first broadcast November 1, 2008.]Apple core, Baltimore! Ever play the rhyming game where you eat an apple, then shout 'apple core,' and then the first person to respond 'Baltimore!' gets to decide where (more specifically, at whom) the core gets tossed. This old-fashioned game is hours of fun for the whole family! We promise.'A fish stinks from the head down.' When an Indianapolis woman is quoted saying that, she's accused of calling someone a stinky fish. She say...

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[ Mon, 9 Mar 2009 04:01:00 GMT ]


Twacking around Duckish Minicast - 4 March 2009
Time for another linguistic mystery. Where would you be if you decided to go twacking around duckish, and then you came home and wrote about it in a scribbler? Any idea? If you're going twacking around duckish, you're likely in Newfoundland. The type of English spoken there may be the most distinctive collection of dialects in Canada. Some of it sounds a lot like Irish-accented English. Other dialects in Newfoundland have echoes of the speech of immigrants from the West Country of England.Visit ...

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[ Wed, 4 Mar 2009 05:01:00 GMT ]


Tweet, Tweet! Polly Wanna Cracker! - 2 March 2009
'Twittering,' 'tweeting,' 'twirting'--it's rare to see a whole new body of language appear right before your eyes. But that's what's happening with 'Twitter.' We discuss the snappy new shorthand of the 'twitterati.' Also, why do people feel compelled to say 'Polly wanna cracker'? whenever they see a parrot? And is it ever okay to 'end a sentence with a preposition'?For a closer look at the language of the 'twitterati,' check out Erin McKean's recent piece in the 'Boston Globe.'http://boston.com/...

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[ Mon, 2 Mar 2009 05:01:00 GMT ]


Chicken Scratches and Creaky Voice - 23 Feb. 2009
Does your 'handwriting' look like chicken scratches, calligraphy, or maybe something in between? Martha and Grant discuss the 'state of penmanship,' the phenomenon linguists call 'creaky voice,' euphemisms for going to the bathroom, and the New England expression 'I 'hosey' that!' There's a new book out about the history of penmanship. It's called Script & Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting, by Kitty Burns Florey. <http://www.kittyburnsflorey.com/index.htm>If you want to claim ...

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[ Mon, 23 Feb 2009 05:01:00 GMT ]


How About a Game of Meehonkey? - 16 Feb. 2009
Time for another linguistic mystery. In what part of the country would you be likely to hear older folks using the following phrases? 'He sure was mommucking his little brother.'And: 'Why, those kids used to play meehonkey every afternoon!' And: 'Ohhhhhhh, I was quamished in the stomach.' Give up? The place you're likely to hear the words mommucking, meehonkey, and quamished is called Ocracoke. It's just off the North Carolina coast -- one of the Outer Banks barrier islands.Settled by the Britis...

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[ Mon, 16 Feb 2009 05:02:00 GMT ]


L-U-R-V-E, Love - 16 Feb. 2009
Martha and Grant share a couple of favorite online sources for reading about language: Michael Quinion's World Wide Words newsletter <http://www.worldwidewords.org/> and Arnold Zwicky's blog <http://arnoldzwicky.wordpress.com/>. Be sure to check out Zwicky's post, 'Dialect dangerous to cats' for a look at The Lion Cut <http://arnoldzwicky.wordpress.com/2009/01/23/dialect-dangerous-to-cats>If you're a Texan, you may be familiar with the phrases 'raise the window down' and 'help ...

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[ Mon, 16 Feb 2009 05:00:00 GMT ]


Once Upon a Time - 9 Feb. 2009
Are fairy tales too scary for children? A survey of parents in Britain found that more than half wouldn't read them to their children before age five. Martha and Grant discuss the grisly imagery in fairy tales, and whether they're too traumatizing for kids. Also, when did 'dog food' become a verb? And does the word butterfly come from 'flutter by'?How did serialized melodramas come to be called soap operas? The answer has to do with the suds-selling sponsors of old-time radio shows.When a theate...

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[ Mon, 9 Feb 2009 05:01:00 GMT ]


Love Joe Floggers? So Don't I! - 2 Feb. 2009
Time to solve another linguistic mystery. You're in a restaurant. You overhear a conversation at the next table. The woman says to her friend, 'You know, I just love the taste of joe floggers.' And her dining companion replies enthusiastically, 'Joe floggers? Oh, so don't I!'Okay, so where would you likely to hear people talk about the joys of 'joe floggers'? Well, chances are you'd probably be in...New England, most likely coastal Massachusetts or Maine. There 'joe flogger' is a name denoting a...

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[ Mon, 2 Feb 2009 05:02:00 GMT ]


Riddled Through With Riddles - 2 Feb. 2008
[This episode first aired October 25, 2008.]Here's a riddle: 'Nature requires five, custom gives seven, laziness takes nine, and wickedness eleven.' Think you know the answer? You'll find it in this week's episode, in which Grant and Martha discuss this and other old-fashioned riddles. Also: how did the phrase 'going commando' come to be slang for 'going without underwear'? And which word is correct: 'orient' or 'orientate'?To go commando means to 'go without underwear.' But why 'commando'? An I...

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[ Mon, 2 Feb 2009 05:01:00 GMT ]


Just a Dite about Sculch and Dooryards - 26 Jan. 2009
Where in the world would you be likely to find sculch in your dooryard, or ask for just a dite of cream in your coffee? Martha has the answers in this minicast about some distinctive regional terms....Here's a linguistic puzzle for you. Suppose you stopped by my home and said, 'Martha, did you know there's sculch in your dooryard?' That's right, sculch in my dooryard.So, in what part of the country would you expect to hear these terms?The answer? We'd probably be in New England, and most likely ...

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[ Mon, 26 Jan 2009 05:02:00 GMT ]


Days of Wine Flights and Mullets - 26 Jan. 2009
President Barack Obama hopes to boost the economy by pouring federal dollars into efforts to rebuild the nation's infrastructure, much like the old Works Progress Administration of the 1930s. But how about reviving that other jobs program from the New Deal era: the 'Federal Writers Project.' Martha and Grant discuss the pros and cons of subsidizing writers with taxpayer money.A caller from Juneau, Alaska, says she was tickled when her friend from the South told her he loves 'vye-EEN-ers.' It too...

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[ Mon, 26 Jan 2009 05:01:00 GMT ]


Will The Rain Hurt The Rhubarb? - 19 Jan. 2009
The hosts discuss two Obamafications: 'Obamanation' and 'Obamination.' Slate's book and widget that include many Barack Obama-derived words are here: <http://www.slate.com/id/2193793/>.You'd be forgiven for wondering if 'eavesdropping' derives from the idea of would-be spies slipping and falling from the eaves of a house. But it doesn't.Time for a sports question! If an NFL team has a week without having to play a game during the season, it's called a 'bye week.' But a caller says he's als...

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[ Mon, 19 Jan 2009 05:01:00 GMT ]


Will The Rain Hurt The Rhubarb? - 19 Jan. 2009
The hosts discuss two Obamafications: 'Obamanation' and 'Obamination.' Slate's book and widget that include many Barack Obama-derived words are here: <http://www.slate.com/id/2193793/>.You'd be forgiven for wondering if 'eavesdropping' derives from the idea of would-be spies slipping and falling from the eaves of a house. But it doesn't.Time for a sports question! If an NFL team has a week without having to play a game during the season, it's called a 'bye week.' But a caller says he's als...

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[ Mon, 19 Jan 2009 05:01:00 GMT ]


Hoopoe Heads - 12 Jan. 2009
Listen: Can you guess what this is?'Huup huup huup . . . huup huup huup . . . huup huup huup.'No, it's not Morse code. Not a baby chimp. It's the sound of the hoopoe.Funny-looking bird, the hoopoe. It has a pink head, zebra-striped wings, and what looks like a great party hat of pink feathers tipped in black and white.The hoopoe's flight is somewhat erratic, more like a butterfly than a bird. One other odd thing about hoopoes: their nests are extremely stinky. Hoopoes line their nests with their...

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[ Mon, 12 Jan 2009 05:30:00 GMT ]


Hoopoe Heads - 12 Jan. 2009
Listen: Can you guess what this is?'Huup huup huup . . . huup huup huup . . . huup huup huup.'No, it's not Morse code. Not a baby chimp. It's the sound of the hoopoe.Funny-looking bird, the hoopoe. It has a pink head, zebra-striped wings, and what looks like a great party hat of pink feathers tipped in black and white.The hoopoe's flight is somewhat erratic, more like a butterfly than a bird. One other odd thing about hoopoes: their nests are extremely stinky. Hoopoes line their nests with their...

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[ Mon, 12 Jan 2009 05:30:00 GMT ]


A Moniker for Your Monitor - 12 Jan. 2009
[This episode first aired October 18, 2008.]This week on A Way with Words: Fess up: Do you have a pet name for your car? How about your computer? Martha and Grant discuss the urge to give nicknames to inanimate objects in our lives. Also, why do we speak of 'vetting' a political candidate? And what in the world is a 'zoo plane'?Fess up, now: Do you have a pet name for your car? Or maybe you spend so much quality time with your computer that you've given it a particularly affectionate moniker? Wh...

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[ Mon, 12 Jan 2009 05:01:00 GMT ]

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