Mr. Can't Died (Rebroadcast) - 12 January 2015 - a podcast by A Way with Words

This week on "A Way with Words": You pick up what you think a glass of water and take a sip, but it turns out to be Sprite. What's the word for that sensation when you're expecting one thing and taste something else? Also, slang from college campuses, like "ratchet" and "dime piece." And the story of a writer who published her first novel at age 73, then went on to win a National Book Award. Plus, the origins of bluebloods, Melungeons, Calcutta bets, Vermont Cree-mees, and a handy phrase used to help buck someone up: Mr. Can't died in a cornfield.

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Is it a good thing to be ratchet? This slang term can refer to a bumpin' party or a girl who's a hot mess.

There's nothing like a refreshing gulp of water, unless what you thought was water turns out to be vodka or Sprite. When the expectation of what you'll taste gives way to surprise, shock, and offense, you've experienced what one listener calls cephalus offendo. You might also call it anticipointment.

The phrase I see you, meaning I acknowledge what you're doing, comes from performance, and pops up often in African-American performance rhetoric.

A listener from Charlottesville, Virginia, is dating a professional golfer who often plays a Calcutta with other tour members. Calcutta, a betting game going back over 200 years, involves every player betting before the tournament on who they think will finish with the lowest score. It was first picked up by the British in and around—you guessed it—Kolkata, also known as Calcutta.

When a term paper is due in 24 hours, there's no better tactic than to break open the Milano cookies and procrastineat.

Our Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a game for the Mamas and the Papas, with two-word phrases beginning with the letters M-A- M-A- or P-A- P-A-

If you say you're not up to this or that challenge, someone might push you harder with the reminder Mr. Can't died in a cornfield. This old saying is particularly evocative if you've ever been stuck in a corn field, because it's easy to think you won't make it out. Another version of this phrase is can't died in the poorhouse.

Blue blood, a term often used to refer to WASPy or patrician folks, goes back to the 1700s and the Spanish term sangre azul. It described the class of people who never had to work outside or expose themselves to the sun, so blue veins would show through their ivory, marble-like skin.

If someone's a dime piece or a dime, they're mighty attractive -- as in, a perfect 10.

What's the difference between drunk and drunken? If you dig through the linguistic corpora, or collections of texts, you'll find that we celebrate in drunken revelry and break into drunken brawls, but individuals drive drunk and or get visibly drunk. Typically, drunken is used for a situation, and drunk refers to a person.

Ever seen someone repeatedly around town and made up an elaborate life story for them without actually ever meeting them? In slang terms, that sort of person in your life is called a unicorn.

Harriet Doerr published her first novel, the National Book Award-winning Stones for Ibarra, at the age of 73.

Don't think about ordering a soft serve ice cream in Vermont—there, it's a Creemee. The term has stuck around the Green Mountain State by the sheer force of Vermonter pride.

The term Melungeon, applied to a group of people in Southeastern Appalachia marked by swarthy skin and dark eyes, has been used disparagingly in the past. But Melungeons themselves reclaimed that name in the 1960s. The Melungeon Heritage website details some of the mystery behind their origin. The name comes from the French term melange, meaning "mixture."

The initialism LLAS, meaning love you like a sister, isn't a texting phenomenon—it goes back 30 or 40 years to when girls would write each other letters.

Diminutive suffixes, Donnie for Don, change the meaning of a name to something smaller, cuter, or sweeter.

This episode was hosted by Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett.
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