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A Way with Words - language, linguistics, and callers from all over

Singing Sand (Rebroadcast) - 30 August 2021

A Way with Words - language, linguistics, and callers from all over

A Way with Words

Language Learning, Society & Culture, Education

4.62.3K Ratings

🗓️ 30 August 2021

⏱️ 51 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Cat hair may be something you brush off, but cat hair is also a slang term that means "money." In the same way, cat beer isn't alcoholic — some people use cat beer as a joking term for "milk." And imagine walking on a beach with a long stretch of shoreline. With each step, the ground makes a squeaking sound under your feet. There's a term for the kind of sand that makes this yip-yip-yip sound. It's called barking sand. Plus, a listener describes some of the English she heard in a small Alaskan coastal town. It's a rich mixture of fishermen's slang, along with the speech of Native people, and the Norwegians who settled there. All that, and a triple-threat puzzle, paternoster lakes, barely vs. nearly, comprised of vs. composed of, cark, kittenball, the pokey, happy as a boardinghouse pup, close, but no tomato, and plenty 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. Twitter @wayword. Copyright Wayword, Inc., a 501(c)(3) corporation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

You're listening to Away with Words, the show about language, and how we use it.

0:03.4

I'm Grant Barrett.

0:04.4

And I'm Martha Barnett.

0:05.8

Grant, this week I put on my flippers and mask and took a deep dive into one of our favorite books.

0:10.8

The dictionary?

0:11.6

Uh, close. It was home ground, a guide to the American landscape.

0:16.0

Oh, what a lovely book.

0:17.0

Yes, you'll recall that this is a book in which writers have gathered more than 800 terms

0:23.2

that have to do with features of the landscape, particular to various places.

0:28.3

Right.

0:28.8

These are words that are used in particular locales, but not necessarily something that

0:33.2

you would find in a regular dictionary.

0:36.6

And here's a great example from that book that I brought up from my deep dive, Potter

0:41.4

Noster Lake.

0:43.3

So Potter Noster is our father in Latin?

0:47.0

Yes.

0:48.0

Yes.

0:49.0

So I don't really know where to go from there.

0:50.8

Yeah, yeah.

0:51.8

It's sort of puzzling, right?

0:53.1

But this is an official name.

0:54.7

This is a kind of lake, right?

...

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