Keep Your Powder Dry (Rebroadcast) - 6 November 2023

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A Way with Words

Language Learning, Society & Culture, Education

4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 6 November 2023

⏱️ 53 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/contact. Be a part of the show: call 1 (877) 929-9673 toll-free in the United States and Canada; worldwide, call or text/SMS +1 (619) 800-4443. Email words@waywordradio.org. Twitter @wayword. 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	All right? I'm Jack Grealish. I think you can listen to music from relaxing to
0:05.4	celebrating to getting yourself prepared. I like all sorts honestly I like hip-hop
0:10.7	R&B and then house music as well so yeah there's no guilty
0:14.5	around here. Jack wears the Bose Quiet Comfort Ultra headphones enjoying his
0:19.4	favorite music with more immersive sound than ever before.
0:23.0	Wow, music, so everything, isn't it?
0:25.0	Search Bose headphones.
0:27.0	Bose, sound is power.
0:30.0	You're listening to Away with Words,
0:32.0	the show about language and how we use it. I'm Grant Barrett.
0:35.0	And I'm Martha Barnett. In 1759, a new head of the Treasury was installed in France, and he had this daunting job of trying to rein in a
0:44.8	spiraling deficit under the King Louis 15th and so he imposed all these
0:50.0	austerity measures he cut state, he taxed luxury items, including
0:55.0	doors and windows, he taxed bachelorhood itself, and he ended public funding for
1:00.2	the king's gambling losses. Well, all of this penny pinching made him really unpopular.
1:05.2	And in fact when people were doing things on the cheap they would use his name.
1:10.0	His name was Etienne de Siluette and they would say I'm doing something
1:15.2	a la Silouette that is on the cheap you know kind of shoddy and his name also
1:20.2	gave us the word that we have in English for a dark outline of someone or something
1:24.8	against a light background, silhouette.
1:28.1	There was a fashion during that time for making those kinds of portraits of people just an outline of somebody
1:34.6	against a light background because of course it's a whole lot cheaper than trying to
	...

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