At Accardo, you'll save 25% on your first shop and get free delivery, which means if you were to buy a four cheese pizza, you'd basically be getting one of the cheeses for free. Save and splurge at Accardo, the online supermarket. Geographical and other restrictions. Min spend £60 on charge to apply. Discount available on food, new customers only, max saving £20,000. Terms at Accardo.com. You're listening to Away With Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I'm Martha Barnett. New Customers Only, Max Saving 20 pounds. Terms at Arcado.com. You're listening to Away With Words, The Show About Language, and How We Use It.

I'm Martha Barnett.

And I'm Grant Barrett.

And looking through some old papers, I came across some notes that I made in 2007

for a documentary called The Joy of Lex.

It aired on the Discovery Channel at the time.

It was super fun.

But the assignment that they gave me was to go to New York City and look at the F line on the subway and follow all the stops in the F line and gather up language from each stop, from the history of each neighborhood and borough.

And so I've got these notes, and I figured in the

spirit of recycling, that I could share some of this with you. This is a very green show.

Very green show. Yes. I'd love to hear some. It's an incredibly rich history. I mean, we are

talking about one of the major world cities, right? With millions of people. For example, gridlock

comes from New York City. Is it right?

Yeah, Gridlock Sam wrote for one of the newspapers and coined the term to refer to cars being stuck in the middle of an intersection. Oh, no kidding. Dude, of course, you probably knew that, comes from New York City in the 1800s. Rotissory baseball. Rotissory baseball. I don't know what that is. It's kind of like fantasy baseball. Oh, okay. Okay. Kind of like that.

All right. Hatchetory. It's kind of like fantasy baseball.

Oh, okay. Okay. Kind of like that.

All right. Hatchet man. So the term for the political guy who goes out and deals with your political enemies kind of behind the scenes comes from New York City.

Panhandler. Another term for somebody asking for money.

Bag lady probably comes from New York City and best of all,

Waldorf salad. Yes, I knew that from the hotel. But I wanted to tell you my favorite New Yorkism that came from this work that I did along the F-line in New York City. And it's a joke that waiters

and bartenders would say when they handed you a glass of water, as if they were handing you, say, two fingers of rye, neat in a glass. They would say, here, have one on the city. It's just this dumb joke that lasted for the longest time in New York City. I don't know if anyone's still using it. But there we go. A little bit of the color of New York City.

...