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From Book Smart Studios, this is Lexicon Valley, a podcast about language.

I'm Mike Volo with Bob Garfield, and today on the show, our first mailbag segment,

listener Stephen wrote in from Australia to say, quote, I've been horn swoggled. So what exactly has

happened to me? And when did people start getting horn swagled? Is it painful? Thanks.

Well, I'm sorry that happened to you, Stephen. I know it was touch and go for a while, but you seem to be okay now.

Bob, have you ever been horn swoggled, and did you press charges?

I have been horn swagled, but I horn swagled myself in a little bizarre in Jerusalem,

paying 20 times more for a souvenir than it was worth

because I did all the parking myself.

I said, name me a price for this icon in a hammered silver frame.

And I named a sum in excess of $100.

I bought it, and at the next stall, I saw it was like $9.

Did his eyes light up when you said that price?

I'm sure he tells the story to this day.

Okay, so Stephen wants to know when did people first start getting horn swoggled?

In the late 1820s, the University of Virginia published a weekly journal called the Virginia Literary Museum.

If you look at just one issue alone from December 30, 1829, it begins with a long discussion of various superstitions

around the world, things lucky and unlucky, as they put it. That's followed by an essay about

...