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PODCAST

A Way with Words - language, linguistics, and callers from all over

Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett. Produced by Stefanie Levine.

Fun conversation with callers from all over about new words, old sayings, slang, family expressions, word histories, linguistics, dialects, word games, books, literature, writing, and more. Be on the show with author/journalist Martha Barnette and linguist/lexicographer Grant Barrett. Share your thoughts, questions, and stories: https://waywordradio.org/contact or words@waywordradio.org. In the US and Canada, call or text 1 (877) 929-9673 toll-free 24/7. Send a voice note or message via

society & culture language learning

All Episodes

53:45

Highway Robbery - 4 December 2023

A Way with Words - language, linguistics, and callers... ·

2023/12/04

Secret signals on the job: Waitresses at some 19th-century restaurants ensured speedy drink service by communicating with a non-verbal code. One server took orders, then placed each customer's cup to indicate exactly what the customer wanted. A second server could then whisk right in and serve the right beverage without asking. Also, the term highway robbery goes back to the 1600s, when armed robbers stopped carriages traveling out of town and ordered occupants to turn over their valuables. And what

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53:45

Spill the Tea (Rebroadcast) - 27 November 2023

A Way with Words - language, linguistics, and callers... ·

2023/11/27

If someone urges you to spill the tea, they probably don’t want you tipping over a hot beverage. Originally, the tea here was the letter T, as in “truth.” To spill the T means to “pass along truthful information.” Plus, we’re serving up some delicious Italian idioms involving food. The Italian phrase that literally translates “eat the soup or jump out the window” means “take it or leave it,” and a phrase that translates as “we don’t fry with water around here” means “we don’t do things halfway.”

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53:45

Dirty Laundry (Rebroadcast) - 20 November 2023

A Way with Words - language, linguistics, and callers... ·

2023/11/20

When you had sleepovers as a child, what did you call the makeshift beds you made on the floor? In some places, you call those bedclothes and blankets a pallet. This word comes from an old term for “straw.” And: What’s the story behind the bedtime admonition “Sleep tight, and don’t let the bedbugs bite”? Plus, when grownups are talking about sex or money, they may remind each other that “little pitchers have big ears.” It’s a reference to the ear-shaped handle on a jug, and the knack kids have for

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53:45

Strong Coffee - 13 November 2023

A Way with Words - language, linguistics, and callers... ·

2023/11/13

During the late 19th and early 20th century, thousands of volunteers helped crowdsource the Oxford English Dictionary. This venerable reference work includes citations sent in by inventors, eccentrics, scientists and educators, an Arctic explorer–even the owner of the world’s largest collection of pornography. A lively new book tells their stories. Plus, a healthcare worker finds herself adopting the accent of her patients. And: golf terms that make their way into everyday language,

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53:45

Keep Your Powder Dry (Rebroadcast) - 6 November 2023

A Way with Words - language, linguistics, and callers... ·

2023/11/06

Jacuzzi and silhouette are eponyms — that is, they derive from the names of people. An Italian immigrant to California invented the bubbly hot tub called a jacuzzi. And the word silhouette commemorates a penny-pinching treasury secretary who lasted only a few months in office and was associated with these shadow portraits. Also, if the words strubbly, briggling, and wabashing aren’t already in your vocabulary, they should be — if only because they’re so much fun to say. Only one of them refers to

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53:45

One-Armed Paper Hanger (Rebroadcast) - 30 October 2023

A Way with Words - language, linguistics, and callers... ·

2023/10/30

The emotional appeal of handwriting and the emotional reveal of animal phrases. Should children be taught cursive writing in school, or is their time better spent studying other things? A handwritten note and a typed one may use the very same words, but handwritten version may seem much more intimate. Plus, English is full of grisly expressions about animals, such as there’s more than one way to skin a cat and until the last dog is hung. The attitudes these sayings reflect aren’t so prevalent today,

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53:45

Hair on Your Tongue (Rebroadcast) - 23 October 2023

A Way with Words - language, linguistics, and callers... ·

2023/10/23

If you speak both German and Spanish, you may find yourself reaching for a German word instead of a Spanish one, and vice versa. This puzzling experience is so common among polyglots that linguists have a name for it. • The best writers create luscious, long sentences using the same principles that make for a musician’s melodious phrasing or a tightrope walker’s measured steps. • Want to say something is wild and crazy in Norwegian? You can use a slang phrase that translates as “That’s totally

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53:45

Train of Thought (Rebroadcast) - 16 October 2023

A Way with Words - language, linguistics, and callers... ·

2023/10/16

Chances are you recognize the expressions Judgment Day and root of all evil as phrases from the Bible. There are many others, such as the powers that be and bottomless pit, which both first appeared in scripture. • There’s a term for when the language of a minority is adopted by the majority. When, for example, expressions from drag culture and hip-hop go mainstream, they’re said to have covert prestige. • The language of proxemics: how architects design spaces to bring people together or help them

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53:45

Space Cadet (Rebroadcast) - 9 October 2023

A Way with Words - language, linguistics, and callers... ·

2023/10/09

We have books for language-lovers and recommendations for history buffs. • How did the word boondoggle come to denote a wasteful project? The answer involves the Boy Scouts, a baby, a craft project, and a city council meeting. • Instead of reversing just individual letters, some palindromes are sentences with reversed word order. • Also squeaky clean, dad, icebox, search it up, pretend vs. pretentious, toe-counting rhymes, comb the giraffe, a Korean song about carrots, a word game, and more.Read

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53:45

Howling Fantods (Rebroadcast) - 2 October 2023

A Way with Words - language, linguistics, and callers... ·

2023/10/02

Are there words and phrases that you misunderstood for an embarrassingly long time? Maybe you thought that money laundering literally meant washing drug-laced dollar bills, or that AM radio stations only broadcast in the morning? • A moving new memoir by Kansas writer Sarah Smarsh touches on the connection between vocabulary and class. • The inventive language of writer David Foster Wallace. • Also ilk, how to pronounce Gemini, fart in a mitten, greebles, make over, sploot, to boot, a brainteaser,

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53:45

Pizza Bones - 25 September 2023

A Way with Words - language, linguistics, and callers... ·

2023/09/25

If your last name is Cook or Smith, your ancestors probably worked in those professions. But what if your last name is Pope? Or Abbott? And if you have enough food for Coxey’s army, you have more than enough to go around. The phrase refers to protesters marching on Washington more than a century ago. Plus, some people say pizza bones are the best parts of the pie! Also, biweekly, shichimencho, piza no mimi, a Barbenheimer-inspired portmanteau puzzle, advice for writers of children’s books, lax vowel

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53:45

Bottled Sunshine (Rebroadcast) - 18 September 2023

A Way with Words - language, linguistics, and callers... ·

2023/09/18

If you catch your blue jeans on a nail, you may find yourself with a winklehawk. This term, adapted into English from Dutch, means “an L-shaped tear in a piece of fabric.” And: What’s your relationship with the books on your shelves? Do the ones you haven’t read yet make you feel guilty — or inspired? Plus, we’re all used to fairy tales that start with the words “Once upon a time.” Not so with Korean folktales, which sometimes begin with the beguiling phrase “In the old days, when tigers used to

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53:45

Endless Summer - 11 September 2023

A Way with Words - language, linguistics, and callers... ·

2023/09/11

Surf’s up! When surfers describe the waves as going gangbusters, it’s a great time out on the water. But why that word? Plus, a thesaurus of flavors serves up delicious writing about the taste of foods and spices. And speaking of flavors, the history of vanilla is anything but bland. When the vanilla flavor was introduced to 16th-century Europeans, it was considered a rare delicacy. So why does the expression plain vanilla mean unexceptional today? Also, funny street names, hoorah’s nest, mooch, a

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53:45

Care Package (Rebroadcast) - 4 September 2023

A Way with Words - language, linguistics, and callers... ·

2023/09/04

Sending someone a care package shows you care, of course. But the first care packages were boxes of food and personal items for survivors of World War II. They were from the Committee for American Remittances to Europe, the acronym for which is CARE. Also: Montgomery, Alabama, is home to the new National Memorial for Peace and Justice. This profoundly moving structure commemorates the thousands of African-Americans lynched between 1877 and 1950 in acts of racial terror. The word lynch itself goes

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53:45

Cootie Shot (Rebroadcast) - 28 August 2023

A Way with Words - language, linguistics, and callers... ·

2023/08/28

Perfect sentences and slang that tickles your mind! A new book of writing advice says a good sentence “imposes a logic on the world’s weirdness” and pares away options for meaning, word by word. • Your musician friend may refer to his guitar as an ax, but this slang term was applied to other musical instruments before it was ever used for guitars. • We need a word for that puzzling moment when you’re wondering which recyclables go in which bin. Discomposted? Plus: tickle bump, dipsy doodle, dark as

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53:45

Sticky Wicket - 21 August 2023

A Way with Words - language, linguistics, and callers... ·

2023/08/21

Is listening to an audiobook for a book club somehow “cheating”? Is there no substitute for engaging with the printed page, or do audiobooks adds a whole new dimension? Plus, a mocktail os an artisanal beverage without alcohol. Is there a more positive term that doesn’t imply there’s something missing? Also: dibbly-dobbly, sledging, and sticky wicket — the game of cricket has a language all its own! And a rhyming cruise quiz, congee, silly mid-off, hot dish, an irresistible newspaper headline, clean

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53:45

Ding Ding Man (Rebroadcast) - 14 August 2023

A Way with Words - language, linguistics, and callers... ·

2023/08/14

In 1803, a shy British pharmacist wrote a pamphlet that made him a reluctant celebrity. The reason? He proposed a revolutionary new system for classifying clouds — with Latin names we still use today, like cumulus, cirrus, and stratus. Also: when reading aloud to children, what’s the best way to present a dialect that’s different from your own? And: If you’re only guessing when you toss it in the recyclng bin, then you’re engaging in wishcycling — and that does more harm than good. Plus, T

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53:45

Gleam in Your Eye - 7 August 2023

A Way with Words - language, linguistics, and callers... ·

2023/08/07

A remarkable new documentary explores the world of amateur and professional mermaiding and the language bubbling up within it. Some mermaiding enthusiasts greet each other with a friendly "Shello!" Plus, an adoptee wonders what to call the biological parents he found later in life. Bio dad? Birth mother? Or something else? And: street names that make you laugh. Do you really want to take a drive on Yellowsnow Road? Also, saucered and blowed, Eri ancora nel mondo della luna, metathesis, in-group vs

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53:45

Take Tea for the Fever (Rebroadcast) - 31 July 2023

A Way with Words - language, linguistics, and callers... ·

2023/07/31

Silence comes in lots of different forms. In fact, says writer Paul Goodman, there are several kinds: There's the noisy silence of "resentment and self-recrimination," and the helpful, participatory silence of actively listening to someone speak. Plus, the strange story behind the English words "grotesque" and "antic": both involve bizarre paintings found in ancient Roman ruins. Finally, the whirring sound of a Betsy bug and a moth's dusty wings give rise to picturesque English words and phrases

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53:45

Alligator Mouth - 24 July 2023

A Way with Words - language, linguistics, and callers... ·

2023/07/24

Kinbank is a new database that illustrates the global diversity of family terms. English, for example, specifies sibling relationships with just one of two terms: sister or brother. But most other languages have even more specific terms. In Japanese, for instance, there’s a single word for “older brother” and another for “younger sister.” Plus, confused by all the names in Russian novels? Characters often go by more than one name, but there are strategies for keeping them all straight. And: why

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