Made from Scratch - 13 December 2021

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

🗓️ 13 December 2021

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Enthusiastic book recommendations! Martha’s savoring the biography of Alexander von Humboldt, the 19th-century explorer, polymath, and naturalist who revolutionized our understanding of nature and predicted the effects of human activity on climate. Grant’s enjoying A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived, about how the study of DNA is rewriting our understanding of history itself. And a customer is startled when a salesperson waves goodbye with a friendly Preesh! Is Preesh really a word you might use to say you appreciate someone’s business? Plus, where would you hunt for a tizzy? All that, and whang, sloomy, abbiocco, receipt vs. recipe, scorn vs. scone, the language of emotions, poronkusema, a brain-tickling puzzle about the letter P, and the story behind the unit of distance called a smoot. 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	You're listening to away with words, the shout out language, and how we use it.
0:04.0	I'm Grant Burrett.
0:05.0	And I'm Martha Burnett.
0:07.0	A few weeks ago, we talked about that German term for a short distance,
0:11.0	Katsen Schwung.
0:12.0	Do you remember that?
0:13.0	Oh, yeah.
0:14.0	Yeah, like a cat's leap or a cat's spring.
0:16.0	It's sort of the equivalent of a stone's throw.
0:18.0	You know, it's not a very long distance.
0:20.0	But there are lots of other approximate distances like that that are very picture-esque.
0:26.0	For example, in Greece today, if something's nearby,
0:29.0	you might say that it's one cigarette away in a cigar dromus,
0:34.0	which is the distance that you can walk while finishing a cigarette.
0:38.0	And in Australia, if something's far away either literally or metaphorically,
0:43.0	you might say it's not within a bull's roar.
0:46.0	And that's because a bellowing bull can be heard for a long, long way.
0:51.0	I know you've talked about this before, Grant.
0:54.0	In Boston, you might hear people joking about a unit of measurement called a smooth,
0:58.0	which is five feet seven inches.
1:01.0	And that stems from a prank at MIT in 1958,
1:05.0	where fraternity members used one of their pledges named Oliver Smooth Jr.
	...

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