Keep Your Powder Dry - 25 February 2019

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

A Way with Words

Language Learning, Society & Culture, Education

4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 25 February 2019

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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 messy, tousled hair. Plus: wing it, versing, cocking one’s strumples, keep your powder dry, embeverage, a word game, and so much more. Read full show notes, hear hundreds of free episodes, send your thoughts and questions, and learn more on the A Way with Words website: https://waywordradio.org/. Email words@waywordradio.org. Twitter @wayword. Our listener phone line 1 (877) 929-9673 is toll-free in the United States and Canada. Elsewhere in the world, call +1 (619) 800-4443; charges may apply. From anywhere, text/SMS +1 (619) 567-9673. Copyright Wayword, Inc., a 501(c)(3) corporation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I go by little Sims I'm always listening to music it doesn't matter if I'm in a car on a plane I need to feel it
0:08.7	music gives me life the Bose QC ultra headphones have immersive audio that feels like sound all around.
0:15.0	I can hear every beat right now in front of me.
0:18.0	The noise cancelling allows me to focus so I can let my creativity shine.
0:22.0	Check it out at bows.
0:24.7	Bose sound is power. You're listening to a way with words the show about
0:29.6	language and how we use it. I'm Grant Barrett and I'm Martha Barnett.
0:33.0	In 1759 a new head of the Treasury was installed in France and he had this
0:39.2	daunting job of trying to rein in a spiraling deficit under the King Louis 15th.
0:45.0	And so he imposed all these austerity measures.
0:48.5	He cut state pensions, he taxed luxury items, including doors and windows windows he taxed bachelorhood itself and he
0:55.7	ended public funding for the king's gambling losses well all of this penny
0:59.9	pinching made him really unpopular.
1:02.7	And in fact, when people were doing things on the cheap,
1:05.9	they would use his name.
1:07.4	His name was Etienne de Siluette.
1:10.0	And they would say, I'm doing something Allah Silu silhouette that is on the cheap you know kind of shoddy
1:16.3	and his name also gave us the word that we have in English for a dark outline of someone or
1:21.5	something against a light background,
1:23.7	silhouette.
1:25.1	There was a fashion during that time for making those kinds of portraits of people,
1:29.6	just an outline of somebody against a light background, because of course it's a whole lot cheaper
	...

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