You're listening to Away with Words. I'm Grant Barrett.

And I'm Martha Barnett. In a recent episode, we talked about moments when the language we use is completely lost on someone from another generation.

You say a word or phrase and then you get back this blank stare and you realize, oh my gosh, this person is not old enough to catch the reference I just made.

And we asked for your examples, and one word

kept coming up again and again. And it occurred to me, Grant, that it's kind of a chronological

shibboleth. It's something that really tells you where you stand on either side of the generational

divide. Okay. Which one is it? That word is thong. Ah, yes, thong.

We got an email from Bev Clement of Fort Worth.

She wrote that she's been struggling to break herself of the habit of thinking of a thong is something rubber that you wear on your feet.

Right.

She writes, my daughters insist that I not use the thongongs word, which applies to panties now, not shoes.

And then from the other end of the generational divide, Shannon Lawson wrote,

My uncle Mike told me that I need to check out my Aunt Cassie's thongs. They have flowers on them.

I was very concerned.

And he meant the shoes.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, there were a couple like that.

Icebox is one that kept getting mentioned.

Icebox, definitely.

But the one that struck me the most was this intergenerational progression from the grandmother who says pocketbook, the mother who says purse, and then the granddaughter who says back, right?

Yep, yep, yep.

And it's not so much a disconnect as it just shows this progression through language, right?

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