When Pigs Fly (Rebroadcast) - 14 April 2025

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A Way with Words

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🗓️ 14 April 2025

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Don’t move my cheese! It’s a phrase middle managers use to talk about adapting to change in the workplace. Plus, the origin story of the name William, and why it’s Guillermo in Spanish. And a five-year-old poses a question that puzzles a lot of people: Why is the letter Q so often followed by a U? All that, and adynaton, an assonant quiz, do it up brown, salt of the earth, haven’t grown gills yet, wooling, a silly joke about the number one, a poem about regret, and hide-and-seek calls, such as Ole Ole Olson all in free! Hear hundreds of free episodes and learn more on the A Way with Words website: https://waywordradio.org. Be a part of the show: call or text 1 (877) 929-9673 toll-free in the United States and Canada; elsewhere in the world, call or text +1 619 800 4443. Send voice notes or messages via WhatsApp 16198004443. Email [email protected]. 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	Pst, did you know? You can order McDelivery deals like the Feed the Family deal from 1499. That's
0:05.2	four selected burgers, two medium fries and two small fries. Who's in then? Oh yeah, me. And me.
0:11.0	McDelivery. You're in? Delivery only from 11 a.m. subject to availability. Participation may
0:16.7	vary. Delivery customization and service fee set by chosen restaurant apply. You're listening to Away With Words, the show about language and how we use it.
0:22.6	I'm Grant Barrett.
0:24.6	And I'm Martha Barnett.
0:26.6	In English, if we're talking about something that's not going to happen, we might say it's going to happen when hell freezes over or when pigs fly.
0:36.6	But in Spanish, you can describe something impossible by saying
0:40.0	it's going to happen on the day when cows fly, the day that las bacas wailing. And in Italy, it's not
0:46.3	cows or pigs flying improbably. It's donkeys. They say the equivalent of when donkeys fly.
0:53.5	And it turns out that there's a fancy name for this rhetorical device.
0:58.0	It's called an Atonotans go all the way back to antiquity, and you'll find them in lots and lots
1:12.1	of languages around the world today. Like in the Malay language, for example, they'll say that's
1:17.4	going to happen when cats grow horns. Cats get up to all kinds of trouble. I wouldn't put it past
1:22.7	them. Well, Grant, here's one of my favorites. It's from Bulgarian. It translates as, oh, yeah, that'll
1:29.7	happen when the pig in yellow slippers climbs the pear tree.
1:37.3	Not just any pig. Not just any slippers. The pig in yellow slippers. The pig in yellow slippers.
1:45.1	That's fantastic.
1:50.7	So all around the world, I guess you'll share a bunch of these later.
1:51.9	How did you know?
1:52.5	Yeah.
1:56.8	My favorite, of course, is the French, which I have an affinity for, when chickens have teeth.
	...

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