The One Who Brung You (Rebroadcast) - 26 May 2014 - a podcast by A Way with Words

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.

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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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