Potato Wagon - 20 January 2025

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

🗓️ 20 January 2025

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Thunderstorms might sound scary, but playful explanations for all those booms can help reassure little ones: How about the potato wagon’s rolling over the bridge? Or the angels are going bowling? Plus, if you just finished enjoying an audiobook, you might say you’ve read it, but a listener asks if there’s a better word. And: towns with names that are three letters long — or less. They’re fun to say, and super easy to spell! The town of Eek, Alaska, for example. Plus, the use of humming to mean “stinking,” slashfic and shipping, woodshedding, ratcatcher, bib and tucker, a memoir that features recipes handed down through a Black Appalachian family, a “buzzling” puzzle or a puzzling “buzzle,” I had one of those, but the wheels came off, and lots more. 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. Copyright Wayword, Inc., a 501(c)(3) corporation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:29.7	You're listening to Away with Words, the show about language, and how we use it. I'm Grant Barrett.
0:35.2	And I'm Martha Barnett, and there are some names of towns that I always
0:40.0	have trouble spelling, Tallahassee, for example. Yes, that was the one that came to mind immediately.
0:46.5	How many Ss are in that word? Yeah, how many S's, how many Ls? I always... Do they have a rhyme or
0:52.5	mnemonic to help out? Right. I hope our Tallahassee listeners
0:56.5	can help us with that because I always have to go look up how to spell Tallahassee. I'm sure there's a
1:01.8	trick, but I don't know it. But you know, there are some town names that are really easy to spell.
1:09.2	Some of them just have one letter.
1:11.3	One letter.
1:12.2	One letter.
1:13.4	For example, the town of E.
1:15.3	It's a little town in northern France,
1:17.6	and it just has two main streets which come together
1:20.8	to form the shape of the letter Y,
1:23.1	and they just call that town E.
1:25.2	And then there's another town in Norway,
1:28.4	in northern Norway.
	...

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