Sleepy Winks (Rebroadcast) - 24 October 2022

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

🗓️ 24 October 2022

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly convoluted and over-the-top — often with hilarious results. Plus: George Orwell’s prescient novel 1984 gave us the terrifying image of Big Brother and helped popularize words like doublespeak and Orwellian. And is there a word for fallen snow while leaves still remain on the trees? Also: motor vs. engine, capitol vs. capital, wannabe vs. wannabee, scrape acquaintance, a quiz about words that link other words, Tutivillis, skell gel, complementary alternation discourse constructions, and words for “eye boogers” in Hungarian, French, German, Portuguese, Turkish, Scots, and English. 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	If you eat, sleep, breathe, for all things NFL, then DeZone is your go-to streaming destination.
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0:24.0	NFL Game Pass, only on DeZone.
0:26.0	Sign up at DeZone.com forward slash NFL.
0:29.0	You're listening to Away with Words.
0:31.0	The show about language and how we use it, I'm Grant Barrett.
0:35.0	And I'm Martha Burnett.
0:37.0	The 19th century English writer Edward Bohr Litten
0:40.0	is said to have coined the phrase the pen is mightier than the sword,
0:44.0	but he's best remembered for the first line of his 1830 novel called Paul Clifford
0:51.0	and that single long sentence with the help of a semicolon, a dash, and parentheses reads
0:57.0	it was a dark and stormy night.
1:00.0	The rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals
1:04.0	when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets
1:08.0	for it is in London that our scene lies, rattling along the housetops
1:12.0	and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps
1:16.0	that struggled against the darkness.
1:18.0	I actually like that.
	...

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