Spill the Tea (Rebroadcast) - 27 November 2023

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A Way with Words

Language Learning, Society & Culture, Education

4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 27 November 2023

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If someone urges you to spill the tea, they probably don’t want you tipping over a hot beverage. Originally, the tea here was the letter T, as in “truth.” To spill the T means to “pass along truthful information.” Plus, we’re serving up some delicious Italian idioms involving food. The Italian phrase that literally translates “eat the soup or jump out the window” means “take it or leave it,” and a phrase that translates as “we don’t fry with water around here” means “we don’t do things halfway.” Also: a takeoff word quiz, why carbonated beverages go by various names, including soda, coke, and pop; fill your boots, bangorrhea, cotton to, howdy; milkshake, frappe, velvet, frost, and cabinet; push-ups, press-ups and lagartijas; the Spanish origin of the word alligator, don’t break my plate or saw off my bench, FOMO after death, and much 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.
0:03.7	I'm Grant Barrett.
0:04.6	And I'm Martha Barnett.
0:06.1	If you're in the United States, your fitness routine may include push-ups, where you get on the floor
0:11.5	and you've got your palms flat on the floor and you push yourself up, right?
0:15.0	In Britain it goes by a different name.
0:17.0	They're press-ups.
0:19.0	Same idea, right?
0:21.0	But my new favorite word is the Spanish term for push-ups. It's la Gartija, which means little
0:28.8	lizard. Oh, right. So you're like a lizard. They do the push-ups, right?
0:33.4	Is this the way that they cool their body or something?
0:35.8	Well, I think it's, they're not really sure why lizards do that. It may be some kind of mating
0:39.6	behavior or just sort of marking your territory. Yeah.
0:43.0	But you've seen little lizards do this, right?
0:44.8	They're doing little push-ups.
0:46.1	So those are Laguar-tihas.
0:47.9	And there's something else really cool about that,
0:50.6	which is that that means
0:55.0	Ligarto, Ligardo in Spanish, but the original form Legarto in Spanish means Lizzard,
0:59.0	and that also is part of a familiar English word, the name for those large animals in Florida that look like giant lizards.
1:09.0	El Laguarto?
1:11.0	Lounge lizards? I think of guys with slick back hair and plugs?
	...

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