Mimeographs and Dittos (Rebroadcast) - 27 April 2020

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A Way with Words

Language Learning, Society & Culture, Education

4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 27 April 2020

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode: How colors got their names, and a strange way to write. The terms blue and orange arrived in English via French, so why didn’t we also adapt the French for black and white? • Not every example of writing goes in one direction across the page. In antiquity, people sometimes wrote right to left, then left to right, then back again — the same pattern you use when mowing a lawn. There’s a word for it! • A whiff of those fragrant duplicated worksheets that used to be passed out in elementary schools. Do you call them mimeographed pages or ditto sheets? • Also: three-way chili, hangry, frogmarch, the cat may look at the queen, hen turd tea, and the rhetorical backoff I’m just saying. 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	You're listening to Away with Words, the show about language and how we use it.
0:04.0	I'm Grant Barrett.
0:05.0	And I'm Martha Barnett.
0:06.0	One of the delights of traveling around the country and talking about language is going to a town and asking people what is the one word or phrase that marks
0:16.7	you as being from this area yes absolutely well because you and I have this
0:22.2	fascination with this kind of thing, I've been getting a kick out of a hashtag on Twitter called Words Where you are.
0:30.0	And this is one that was started by the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary.
0:35.0	They want people to send them words for them to investigate as being particularly local.
0:41.0	And I've had a great time going through and looking at some of the things
0:45.1	that people are suggesting that they look into.
0:47.6	And one of them that rang a bell for me was the word three way.
0:51.3	But it's not the three way you think. Not the three way you're thinking. No, this is a Cincinnati term. Do you know it? Is this a kind of intersection? No. No. What is it? That's a good guess. I don't know what it is.
1:03.0	But no, it's a kind of food.
1:05.0	Cincinnati chili, which itself is a really specific kind of chili.
1:08.0	It's started in the Macedonian community there, and it's Chile that's seasoned with with Mediterranean spices
1:16.7	but Cincinnati chili is made lots of different ways
1:20.4	including two-way which is spaghetti topped with chili, and three-way, which is spaghetti,
1:25.6	chili, and cheese, and there's a four-way and a five-way, and if you're from that area,
1:30.1	you absolutely know what three-way means.
1:32.4	I should have guessed food.
1:35.0	I should have guessed food, right?
1:37.0	Yes, absolutely.
	...

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