You're listening to away with words. The show out language and how we use it. I'm Grant Barrett.

And I'm Martha Barnett. Here's a handy German word, imp-night. Oh yeah, oh yeah, I'm going to

totally use that one. Well you might. It's IMPF, N-E-I-D, imp-night. And it means the envy of those

who have been vaccinated. Obviously it's a neologism, but it's making the rounds and I really like it.

But you know what, I had a really cool aha moment when I started digging into the etymology of

this word. The night means envy in German. And the imp has to do with the horticultural metaphor

of grafting, you know, grafting a vaccine onto somebody. And that's when I had the aha moment

because that's the same idea in our word inoculate. It is related to our word ocular having to do

with I because it comes from the Latin oculus, which means I, and was sometimes applied in Latin

to things that were small and round and look like eyes, like buds. And so inoculate in middle

English actually meant to insert a bud in a plant. And then later it was applied to other forms

of grafting or implanting, including grafting a vaccine into somebody to prevent disease. How

cool is that? That is cool. So you are literally putting one creature inside another. Yes, yes,

you're grafting. That's pretty cool. All of that wrapped up in this one little two syllable word.

Well, we love to talk about other languages on the show. And if you speak more than one language,

hey, bring us your favorite word and expression they say in your family or just something wonderful

that you think we ought to know 877 929 9673 or you can explain it in email to words at waywardreader.org

or share it on Twitter at w-a-y-w-o-r-d. Hello, you have a way with words. Hi, it's Michelle,

and I'm calling from the Pokemon Mountains of Pennsylvania. The turn of phrase that I've most

recently been hearing and it's new to me and it just might mean that I don't talk to enough people

is it's been a minute when the reality is it's really not been a minute. So I kind of find it

funny and cute and whimsical and I'm not really sure where that comes from and kind of how it

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