You're listening to a way with words, the show about language and how we use it.

I'm Grant Barrett. And I'm Martha Barnett.

Humpty Bump Pull Top. Diamond Loops. Reverse Sharks Tooth.

If you overheard people talking excitedly using vocabulary like this, you'd probably wonder what in the heck they were talking about.

At least you would unless you were, well, Grant Barrett, because Grant Grant you know what I'm talking about yes that's that's some of the language of people who do

acrobatic flying maneuvers. Yes, they describe the movements of what these daredevil pilots do in the air.

It's like, you know how dance choreographers have a system of symbols and terms to represent the movements that they do on the ground while pilots have them for their movements in the air.

And they can spell them out in this notational system that's called the Aresti system.

It's named for a Spanish aviator who developed a manual for pilots that described

about 3,000 maneuvers and it's expanded to include thousands more, but it includes picturesque terms

like the ones I mentioned and also hammerheads and goldfish from the top.

Goldfish from the top.

So it's called that because if you were

looking down from above the maneuver it's in the shape of a simplified goldfish

right? Right, yeah, yeah. And you know what's also interesting is that there are arrestee dances.

What are those?

Those are the movements that pilots do on the ground that help them visualize and practice for their flights. You can watch videos of them on

YouTube. It's really interesting. It's kind of these jerky movements where they look like they're

deep in thought and they're thinking about what they're doing, but they're doing all these you know hammer heads and and goldfish from the

top. We will link to some of the arrestee dance videos and the arrestee

dictionary of the acrobatic moves that pilots have and if you got some other

interesting language or form of communication in your trade or profession we'd love to

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