Good Job, Brain! - 37: Hold Your Tongue!

Episode Date: November 13, 2012

Let's have fun fumbling through the English language! Think you know when to use i.e., e.g., [sic], etc.? Misheard lyrics, "eggcorns," finger fumblers, and more! Is there a special profession meaning behind YOUR last name? Drink your can of Bite the Wax Tadpole while Karen quizzes the gang on mind-bogglingly stellar examples of translation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an airwave media podcast. Hello, dynamite, dexterous, denizens, and dingoes of the digital dome. Welcome to Good Job, your weekly quiz show and offbeat trivia podcast. This is episode 37. And of course, I'm your humble host. Karen, and we are your formation of four foraging for formulas and for for forks. That was pretty good. I'm Colin.

I'm Dana. I'm Chris. All right. Without further ado, let's jump into our general trivia segment. Pop Quiz, Hotchot. And I have a random trivia pursuit card here. You guys have your barnyard buzzers. Get them ready.

And here we go. Blue Wedge for Geography. What Island Nation has declared itself a nuclear free zone by law. New Zealand. It is New Zealand. All right, Pink Wedge. What TV sitcom launched

Will Smith's acting career? That would be Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Correct. Can you sing the song? In West, I'm not going to sing it. West Bill are not born and raised. Yellow Wedge. What event is usually identified as the start

of the Gay Liberation Movement? That would be the Stonewall Riot? Correct. Stonewall Riot. Purple Wedge, what kind of sandwich is slang for a punch? A knuckle sandwich. Yes, what a weird question. Why is this in true pursuit? You've got to know your English idioms.

Yeah. Knuckle sandwich. Or your 19-20s gangster slang. Green Wedge, what does a Scoville unit measure the heat of Oh. Everybody. Everybody. Hot sauce.

Peppers. Peppers. Peppers. I would have given it to myself. Good job, Chris. Thanks. All right. Last question.

Orange Wedge. In auto racing, what type of flag is waived when drivers cross the finish line? Chris. The checkered flag. Yes. That was too easy. Yeah, that was a weird card. So last week we had Pub Trivian.

And Colin couldn't make it, and he's a resident sports guy. And we know that the World Series just recently happened. And so he sent us via text message just in case, in the picture round, which is in Pub Trivia, they give you a sheet with people's pictures, and you have to identify them. He wrote us a cheat sheet so that we could study. He says, in case there are SF Giants World Series heroes in photo round, Fat guy equals Pablo Sandeval,

Pitcher with dark hair equals Barry Zito. Goofy white guy with beard is Hunter Pence. That's very nice. It showed how committed to trivia we are, how dedicated we are. Even if somebody's on a date with their wife, they send us a nice. Who are you texting? Nobody, nobody. All right, and let's jump into our topic of the week, which is fun with the English language.

Great, I know what you're saying So please stop explaining Don't tell me because it hurts Great, so if we're having So if we're having fun with the English language We should of course talk about Latin. Because there are many, many Latin words, Latin words that are used in English and expressions. And to a fault, people tend to use all of them the wrong way.

So I wanted to throw some Latin expressions and abbreviations and things like that out at you guys to see if anybody is going to get them right. You probably will. But we'll go over them and how to remember them. All right. Okay. So we'll start with the big ones that are confused are E.G. and I. Right. Does somebody want to take a crack at which is which?

EG is for example. EG is for example. And I.E. is that is. To clarify. So EG is an abbreviation of the Latin phrase, Exempli gratia, which means for the sake of example. And so that is what you use in place of for example. So if you're giving something,

if you're giving a number of different possible examples of something, I like comic books, E.G. Superman. But if you were to say D.C.'s most famous comic book hero is the, the Cape Crusader, i.e., Superman. That is to say. That is to say, Superman. And I.E. stands for id-est, I believe. It stands for id-est, exactly. Yep.

So, I.E. is that is. E.G. is, for example. I'm so confused. So E.G. can be several things that fit into a set. And I.E. is exactly that one thing. Oh, well, it could be. Well, no, no. It just means that is. So if you were to say, for example, the planets, i.e. and then list all the planets, that would be okay. Right? It's more about clarifying a point that you've made. In other words.

Right. Well, I wonder what's a good way to remember that. Oh, I guess, e.g. example. Example. Right. Which not only is it a good mnemonic, it's actually the Latin word. It's the best mnemonic. So who wants to venture a guess?

Now you can buzz in. I'll let you guys buzz in on this one. What, when you see the Latin word, sit in a block of text or in parentheses after something that is quoted? What does sick mean? Colin? It means like as written or as said. Exactly. So a lot of people mistakenly think that sick means this is wrong or, you know, when you're

quoting something and like they spell a name wrong and you transcribe it exactly and you put in sick in parentheses. I thought it was spelling incorrect. Yeah. So a lot of people actually think that it is an acronym of spelling incorrect or said in copy or something to that effect, but no, it's actually a Latin word, and all it means is thus, the word thus. And the full Latin phrase is sick eric scriptum, thus was it written?

It does not mean that someone made an error. It just means this is as it was written. So if you're transcribing something and somebody spells something a certain way on purpose for a reason, jargony or like a regional dialect or something. And you want to be clear that you didn't make this typo, you would drop that in there. So sick is used after things that you're quoting, accurately, eG, an error, but not only errors. Correct, right.

So you all know what et cetera means, ETC, period, which is an abbreviation of, of course, et cetera, meaning, and others. Did you know that you can actually use an ampersand and the letter C? No. Yeah, because the meaning of the ampersand has been lost over time. The ampersand is just a ligature of the letters E and T. If you look in some typefaces, it actually looks like a capital letter E, and and a T matched together.

That's all the ampersand is. And so that's why you can, that's why people will use an ampersand and then C, period, to mean et cetera. And you can also use for people. You can use et al, which is actually an abbreviation of et ali and others, but for people. That I did not know. And you do have to use a period after. One of the reasons why the shortened version is used is because it's different if it's a group of men, a group of women, a group of both men and women, a group of gender neutral items. But at all is a good abbreviation for all of those things.

Only for people. It's used in the case of people. You don't say, et cetera, for people. And then, of course, there's the wonderful Latin phrase that everyone loves to use and means anything anyone wants it to mean, apparently, which is per se. What does per se actually mean? You know, for the longest time, I thought it was like P-E-R-S-A-Y, like per se. Like, one would say.

There are people, I saw an online discussion. and people saying, you know, it might have used to have been a Latin phrase, but it's not anymore. Now it's just P-E-R-S-A-Y, one word, and it means, you know, not necessarily. No. I mean, that's great, yeah, same. The meaning, as I understand it, was what I was taught. It was that it means in the strictest sense or in the literal sense.

That's actually not what it means. It means by itself. People misuse it to mean in the literal sense. Like, well, that's not a dog per se. It's a stuff dog, so that's not really correct. So it's by itself, which means I am not bored by science per se, but this teacher is really boring. Would be one example. Yeah, you're right, you're right.

People might be getting it right. Yeah. On accident. So that's the only meaning of per se. And how do you spell it? P-E-R, space, S-E. Two words. Two words.

Not S-A-Y. No. Not S-A-Y. I thought it was like parlay. It was like per se. Oh, yeah. What about one of my favorites, which is? is QED.

Quotum era demonstrator. Wow, not bad. It's a math word. I've heard it more just used in general purpose. Really? So QED, meaning so it is shown. So it has been demonstrated. This was drilled into me in math theory.

Yeah, I can see that. When you write a proof, you know, you have your thesis and then you have all your work shown. And at the very bottom, you put QED. Like, I've done all the work and I've shown that... This has already been shown by the evidence that I have before. Right.

Quedera demonstrandum. Right. So I actually want to piggyback on the per se. That kind of reminded me of something. And I looked up. And it's so funny because it's such a weird word. There's something called an egg corn. Not an acorn, but an egg corn.

So the egg corn is a linguistic term. It represents a substitution of a word or a phrase for words that sound similar or identical in certain dialects. Okay, all right. The new phrase, although incorrect, introduces a meaning that is different from the original, but kind of still makes sense in the same context. E.G. You know, a lot of people call Alzheimer disease, old timers disease, which sound very familiar. And maybe in some dialects and passing it out, Alzheimer's eventually becomes old timers. These egg corn phrases most of the time, they replace an obscure or kind of unfamiliar term. with a more common and modern word.

So in a way, acorns exhibit some kind of inventive. It's like a folk... It is. It is. You hear it, and you haven't heard the word before, so you make up something that it sounds like, and then you rewrite the definition of it to match the word that you use.

It's actually a really new term. It kind of came into existence back in 2003, so not that long ago, by linguistics professor. And he read there was a... of a woman who substitute the word egg corn for the word acorn. Like to her, it was, oh, it's like, it looks like an egg and it kind of is like a corn kernel and started calling it eggorns of acorn. This linguistics professor decided that there wasn't really a name for this phenomenon,

hence just eventually use egg corn to call egg corns. So a couple examples here, you know, some of these blew my mind because I totally have been using the egg corn version. I mean, and then to be clear, like, they have to reach a certain level of saturation to qualify. I mean, because children do this every day. Make it up all the time, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, ex-patriot.

X-Patriot. Yes. I always thought it was, yeah, I'm no longer a patriot of USA because I moved somewhere else instead of ex-patriot, one word, E-X-P-A-T-R-I-A-T-E. Right. Another example is instead of maiden name, mating name. Which makes sense They make just enough sense I would say they make total sense

I would say they make just enough sense It's within the logical realm You know I hear all the time is instead of It's a dog eat dog world It's a doggy dog world Oh a doggy dog A wonderful world where everything is a little puppy I've heard that too

Yeah And another one is praying mantis P-R-E-Y Instead of praying P-R-A-Y which they pray, and they also look like they're praying. So, yeah, eggorns. So kind of related are the Mondagreins, when you mishear lyrics or poems and you make it make more sense.

Like, I think in that book that you read when your little kid, in the year of the boar and Jackie Robinson, she mishears the line from the national anthem as, and which's hands instead of in which it stands. Which is hands. I remember that. Growing up, I thought the clashes rock the Casbah. I didn't know what a Casbah was. I thought it was cat box. Rock the cat box.

I was like, oh, it's like a little carrier for a cat. I made a quiz for you guys where I'll play clip from a song, and then you guys need to write down what you think the rest of the lyric is. So these are frequently misunderstood lyrics then. These are all famous songs that you would have heard. But it might be fuzzy what the next line is. So that was more like the beauty queen from a movie scene. I said, don't mind, but do you mean I'm the one?

So that was a clip from Billy Jean by Michael Jackson, and it's part of the chorus, but what does he say? I don't even remember. All right, Colin, what do you have? Is it the want to dance on the floor? around let me throw this out there is it who would dance on the floor in the round i think you're i think i think i'm closer do the dance do the floor dance for one that is not what you're who will dance on the floor in the round oh who dance on the floor in the round i don't know what that means

like theater in the round i think that's kind of what it is. I've never heard that expression aside from that. I thought it, before I looked it up, I thought it was maybe all around or something. Who would dance on the floor in the round? Okay, the next one is Tiny Dancer by Elton John. I put pass. Okay.

Lay Me Down in Sheets of Something is all I can come up with. Lay me down in sheets of linen. Oh, linen. Linen. Linen. All right. I knew it was, yeah. Yeah, you knew it was a fabric.

I knew it was like, ah, that. Nylon right on. Yeah. Lay me down in sheets of linen. Yeah. He says it kind of funny. Yeah. Well, that's the whole point of it.

Yeah, exactly. All right. Next one is bad romance. Lady Gaga? Oh, Karen, I can get this one. All right. Oh, Gaga. Oh, la-la.

What's your bar romance? I want your ugly. I want your disease. Oh. What do you got? I got something, something, something. As long as you please. Duh.

I want your everything as long as it's free. Yes. All I got was I want your everything. I want your everything as long as it's free. As long as it's free. It did rhyme. The next one is Vogue by Madonna. Colin?

Is it let your body move to the music? Yes. had that. Oh. What did you have? Make your body feel and flow. Whoa.

Got flow. We found Karen's weak point. I know. This one is tricky, but it did come up in trivia for us once. And so I feel like this one is fair game. All right, this is Elvis, Joe House Rock. Sad sack, we're sitting on a block of stone. We're over in the corner we've been all alone.

The water's anybody, don't you be no squel? I'm getting this confused. What do you got? I just feel so confident I'm wrong, but come and do the jailhouse rock right here? No. I put, I love the fried peanut butter banana sandwich. You know what?

It's not. Not far off. No. I think I got it. It's something, something, something edible underwear. Oh, it does rhyme. You got that part. If you can't find a partner, use a wooden chair.

Oh, we did have that. Yeah, it just came rushing back. What does that mean? Because they're all men in the prison, right? To dance with, isn't that? He was all alone, and he said, don't be a square. If you can't find a partner, use a wooden chair.

You can't find a partner use a wooden chair that rock. And we're fighting that rock. Jails in the 50s were very different, Karen. The fact that you can dance and sing and hang out in jail. Good job, you guys. More or less. More or less. That was good. Mondagreens.

One of the weirdest things that I found when I was researching this and misheard phrases and stuff like that was, apparently this is true. There are people out there who think that the great conflict that the world fought in, the two of them from the beginning of the last century, are called War War I and War II. No. Not just a war.

No. Because when you hear it, World War I, if somebody elides that deal, it's going to sound like War War II. World War I. World War I. It probably isn't helped by the fact that it's abbreviated WW or WW II.

Right. And it's not just a war, it's like a war war. Do you like me or do you like like me? A war is so nice they named it twice. Too soon, Dana. Too soon. And we're going to take a quick break for a message from our sponsor. This episode is a episode.

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Shop now at nofrills.ca. And we're back. Welcome to Good Job Brain. We're talking about fun with language today. A longer sentence brings no more than one that I had said before. so it's hard to compromise when i see through your eyes it's just a common view i guess it's lost on you now i can talk the one gets all i know how you like to so do any of you guys know what onomastics is onomastics is the study of names and name origins And so, like, the ono, like, metonym, autonim, like, that's the same root.

Oh, remember how in a past show, you know, how centaur is a man and a horse? Uh-huh. And then a donkey and a man is an ono centaur, because it's a name play. Oh, no. So, onomastics is the study of where name origins comes from. Nope, I like our, I like our definition. Specific etymologies to names. And this is something that's fascinated me ever since I was a kid is occupational name.

Really, in English in particular, we are just inundated with so many occupational names that they become so common we don't even think about it a lot. So, for example, Smith is the most common English surname. And Smith, it was an ironworker, a smithy, a blacksmith, or an iron smith. You know, other names like Shepherd, again, come directly from an occupation. Mason, you know, stone mason, you work with stones. And they're so common that we don't even think about them a lot. And what I was really interested in is how do these come to be? And how do they come down into becoming names?

Like, obviously, someone with a name Mason may not be a Mason anymore. It really goes back to England. Up until, like, the 14th century, really, it wasn't all that common necessarily to have a surname. Towns were small enough. You were Paul the wine merchant, or you were Susan the Weaver. You were just defined sort of by your first name and what you did. There were a few things that happened in England. In the late 1300s, the government started a poll tax.

One of the things that that led to is, well, we need accountability, so we need to have people's last names when we're collecting taxes. And then there was another act that was passed a few years later that required any legal document had to have your first name and a surname. And so these two things really kind of prompted the adoption of what had previously just been occupational names. So if I was John and I worked with Stones, I would make my name John Mason, for example. The European languages, English and French and German and Italian in particular have a really high constitutional. concentration of these occupational names. And you can even see some, you know, some similarities. So, like, we have Smith in English, and there's Schmidt in German.

And those are the same thing. A Schmidt is a German smithy. And it's an exceedingly common name in German as well for the same reason that it is in English that there were a lot of smiths. As I dug into this a little bit more, it's even further than that. So in Italian, Ferraro is the same root as Iron Smith that we have. And in Spanish, Herrero, same root. Right.

So in Herrero, Spanish is Smith, and in Hungarian, you know, Kovacs is a very common last name. Also, these are these smiths of other languages. So that just really fascinated me. There are some that aren't quite as common anymore, like Miller or Archer, you know, Bowman. So I wanted to go over some of the historical ones where the meaning has maybe dropped away. And then we'll have a little bit of quiz here at the end for you guys. One of the interesting things with occupational names is that they can become gendered as well along the way. So there are related pairs of names.

probably guess what somebody with the last name, Weaver, did. Webster, it was the feminized version of Weaver. Get out. So Weaver and Webster are historically related in terms of male Weaver, female Weaver. And this S-T-E-R suffix shows up in other names, too. So Brewer, someone who brews, and Brewster are related as well. Like punky. Gendered, right, male and female, Brewer and Brewster. That's right. Two 80s sitcoms. It's in Webster and then you have Brewster. So let me throw another pair. Baker and Baxter. Baxter. Baker and Baxter. That's right. Some of the names over time, they are occupational names, but they've just totally dropped away. Like, we don't even know what the occupation is anymore. So Burgess was originally a borough official who would represent the borough at governmental meetings. We have no idea of that meaning anymore, but the name, you know, still remains. Hackman, like Gene Hackman, the actor. A hackman was somebody who worked the hackle in a fabric-making machine. And that, That term has just dropped away entirely.

I think it's like, I think of a, like a lumberjack. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean, it's just, there are so, so many of these. I couldn't hope to cover them all. That's so old-time. When you say them, they seem so obvious. Names like Draper, one who worked in draper. Don Draper.

Shearer was one who sheared sheep. Glover, someone who made gloves and leather work. Slater, someone who worked with slate and roofing. Parker, someone who was in charge of parklands or grass. It just goes on and on and on. And, you know, a lot of them, when you think about them now, the connection is obvious. So I want to give you guys a little bit of a quiz where some of these are just awesome trivia questions, and they may not be directly related anymore. So this will sort of test your knowledge of some of these occupational names.

So I'm going to give you guys the surname, and you guys will buzz in and tell me what occupation this is historically descended from. Okay. All right. Some are trickier than others. Sawyer. Karen. Is that like a lumberjohn? sawing.

Yes. A sawyer was somebody who would saw wood for hire. That's right. Lost. That's right. Cooper.

I believe that was Chris. I think that's a clockmaker? No. No. No? Dana. Cooper. Cooper.

Now as I say, these are not necessarily etymologically that you're going to be able to figure out. Yeah, I do too. A cooper is a barrel maker. A barrel maker.

Yeah. It's barrels or buckets. Anything that has like the wooden slats. and the metal rings holding it together. That was a whole field. I discovered when I was researching this, so I say, you know, there are other languages have versions of this.

In German, the name Fossbinder is directly related to the occupation of Cooper. So like the actor, Michael Fossbinder, which literally means cask binder. It was the same occupation in German. A Foss Binder would be a Cooper. It's amazing to be doing this. And of course, Germany would have so many Fass Benders.

That's right. It barrels everywhere for the beer. that's right Fletcher Dana An arrow maker That's right A Fletcher was somebody

Who makes arrows And specifically the feathers Putting the feathers on Which are still to this day Called the Fletching On arrows or darts That's the Fletching Jessica Fletcher

Chandler Big Chris Candle maker Yes The Chandler was the person In a large manor house Responsible for making the candles

And the wax And the word chandelier Comes from the same root Because originally they would have held candles. Her head is falling off right now. Wainwright. Oh. And this is a hybrid one.

I'll give you a little bit of a clue that right, the word right, means maker of. So, Wainwright. Wagon maker? It is, yes. A wagon maker, that's right. It's also related to cartwright. So cartwright, Wayne Wright, would both have very similar jobs. Mercer.

Like mercenary. Oh. I don't know. It's related. It's a merchant? Yeah, essentially. Yeah, it was just somebody, a merchant, but more specifically a textile or a fine silks merchant, that kind of thing. Yeah, but then ultimately just a merchant, yeah.

Here are a couple literary ones for you guys. The author of Dracula was Bram Stoker. You guys know what a stoker was. Chris again. Putting the coal in the fire. That's right. Somebody who would stoke the engine on a mill or a ship. Faulkner, as in William Faulkner.

Dana. Is it related to falcons? Yeah, it is. I felt so dumb when it's falconer. It's almost just a direct shortening from falconer to falchner. Wow, wow. So good job on the quiz, guys. We'll close out here with one final one.

One of us at this table has an occupational surname. Do you guys want to venture a guess, and you may know what a Kohler is? Is the bathroom. No. The toilet cleaner? So I know Cole is some sort of like a charter. Markle material. Yep, you're on the right track.

You know, it's using, like, eyeliner and makeup artist. Makeup artist. Don't overthink it. Someone who works with coal. Yeah, someone who deals coal. That's right. Oh, dealing, dealing coal.

Well, it literally means coal burner is what I've read. That coaler comes from the occupation of coal burner. But that would have also been a dealer. Yeah. I thought Felton and you just put felt on things. Felt on. Felt on her. So those are just, as I say, scratching the surface of some of the ones

that really tickle me. You could just dive in and spend hours researching these. No, but the fact that one out of four of us has one of these occupations. Well, I read a stat, and the stat is, as I say, it's about 20 years out of date. But as of 20 years ago, the stat I read said that 180 of the most common surnames in America were of English origin. So, yeah, I mean, you can see why there's so many of them. Good job, guys. That's great.

So something that I've noticed over the last couple of episodes of Good Job Brain and had been meaning to mention on the show is that there's a certain... A lot of listeners. too. Have listeners written in and said this? Yes, they have said this. There's a certain phrase that Colin says all the time wrong and you use it wrong. Oh, oh. Surprise. Surprise. So the phrase is high concept and you always say that things are high concept and use it to actually mean esoteric or like hard to wrap your head around. Uh huh. Complicated. Okay. It is, it actually means the exact opposite of that. A high concept movie is something that can be easily explained. Hmm. So like snakes on a plane is the ultimate high concept movie because the idea

is the concept, the two-second description of like, this is what happens, is the most important thing or describes everything that's going on. Interesting. Yep. I'm going to have to do my own research and come back. I was prepared to be challenged. Yes. So go ahead and check out what high concept means, and you'll find that lists of high-concept movies include like snakes on a plane, jaws, things of that nature. Well, I just want to say, I'm not wrong.

It's actually an egg corn. So that's how I use high concept. So I actually, so then I put together another list of things that. people use in the wrong ways. So some of these might even dovetail with things that carabom we're talking about. They may, in fact, be eggorns. One of the things is baited breath, right? So a lot of people write it out like bait, as in like there's bait in your mouth.

Like you're laying a trap. No, it actually is from the word a bait, which means to reduce, which means to hold your breath. Yeah, you're like, I'm waiting with baited breath. It means I'm holding my breath in anticipation waiting to see what's going to happen. But there is a sense of anticipation with like a bait with a fishing line bait because you're anticipating. Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah. You're anticipated, right, yeah. Well, I mean, it's, it is. It's an egg corn in the sense of you, you come up

with a story to make it make sense, but historically it is B, A, T, E, D, right. The phrase, a lot of people use the phrase just desserts, and they spell it like the tasty thing you eat at the end of a meal. It's not that? It's not, no. There's a word called, that is in fact

pronounced dessert, but it's only spelled with one S, and it's a, it's a word all on its own. It comes from the same root as the word deserve, And it's just a noun that means something you deserve. No. Not dessert as in the cake you eat after meals. Like the plural of things that you deserve.

And newspapers would often get letters to the editor when they were used just desserts correctly in a headline. They'd get letters of people telling them they missed an S in the word desserts. Yeah. So it's pronounced just desserts, but it's spelled like just deserts. Interesting. Oh, wow. A lot of people use the word nonplussed incorrectly. It does not mean unimpressed.

It means puzzled. Right. So a lot of people are just like, oh, well, you know, I saw it. I was nonplussed. Not that they would actually say that, but when people do use the word nonplussed. When writing, people use it a lot. Yes, yeah. But it actually means puzzled and like really having a hard time with something.

Rather than you can figure it out. Rather than meaning different. It doesn't add up. All right. Well, you're talking about phrases that meaning has sort of changed or come to be misunderstood over time. I want to give you guys a list of words that are other halves of pairs that you may not know existed. So, did you know that you can describe something as being wieldy, which is the opposite of unwieldy? It can be wieldy.

It is easily managed. And these are words that existed before their more commonly known partners. Something can be advertent, meaning I'm paying attention to it. Inadvertion. It is done with attention. Something can be maculate. And maculate literally means covered with spots. And then immaculate is in opposition to maculate.

If you are a person that has a lot of compassion and your kind and tender, you can be described as Ruthful, which is the opposite of Ruthless. If you have a liking or an inclination towards something, you have gust for it. Oh, disgust, yes. It's like Spanish. If something is legal and permissible and allowed, it is licit. If I want to take a flag or a sail and wrap it or roll it up really tight, I am furling it. But I just like maculate. And I'm going to start using that.

So maculate actually means gross. It means spotted or marked up. And immaculate meaning just clean, visually clean, not marked up. Yeah. And then sort of extends from there. So I'm going to give you guys five quick examples here of words that are special for some reason. I want to see if you guys can tell me why they're special in the English language. We'll start with one that I think we've had before.

facetiously. Oh. Karen. Is it all the vowels are in order? It is. It's one of the few words that has all the. the five vowels in order. Even why?

Steamyously would be another one, yes. Tell me what's special about the word, strengths. Karen. It has, I think, up to like a bunch of consonants in order. Not in order, but together with no vowels. That's sort of part of what it is. It's generally considered the longest single-syllable word. Oh, yes.

That's a good one, strengths. Here's a pair. Tell me what's special about kudos and shambles. Karen again. They only exist in plural form. That's right. Tell me what's special about this pair. Apron and adder, like the snake, like a black adder.

Apron. What if I said, hand me an apron. Chris. They were originally naprin and nadder. That's right. Wow. They were words, and the N-Shifted from a naprin to an apron. That makes more sense for Natter and a-pring.

Like napkin. Napkin. Yeah. Oh, wow. All right. Last one. What's special about the word cleave? Think about its various meanings.

Cleavage. Cleavings. Cleaving. Something about the plural with the V and the... Oh, no, it's not worth of graph. What I was getting at is it's one of the few words that can be its own opposite. So cleave can mean to bring together or to cling strongly to, and cleave can also mean to split apart. Oh.

All right. Well, good job, guys. Those are just my little grab bag of some of my favorite nuggets. One last grab bag. Really, really short. So, of course, we know they're tongue twisters in English, right? She sells seashells by the seashore. Right.

So there is an equivalent of this in sign language. In American sign language, there are things called finger fumblers, which are their equivalent of tongue twisters. Of course. That makes so much sense. Yeah, isn't that cool? According to a lot of experts, the phrase, Good blood, bad blood is a finger fumbler.

It's really hard to sign it out. So, yeah. That's fascinating. Yeah, finger fumblers and ton twisters. Of course, that makes so much sense. Throughout history, royals across the world were notorious for incest. They married their own relatives in order to consolidate power and keep their blood blue. But they were oblivious to the havoc, all this inbreeding,

having on the health of their offspring, from Egyptian pharaohs marrying their own sisters to the Habsburg's notoriously oversized lower jaws. I explore the most shocking incestuous relationships and tragically inbred individuals in royal history. And that's just episode one. On the history tea time podcast, I profile remarkable queens and LGBTQ plus royals explore royal family trees and delve into women's medical history and other fascinating topics. I'm Lindsay Holiday and I'm spilling the tea on history. Join me every Tuesday for new episodes of the History Tea Time podcast, wherever fine podcasts are enjoyed. All right, and it's time for our final quiz segment, and this one's a little bit different. It's my quiz, and because of our language episode, I thought I would bring back a segment

we did before, where I would read out the literal translation of movie titles from foreign languages, you'd have to guess what the American movie is. The problem is, a second time around, I was researching and, of course, double-checking and a lot of them exist kind of on a level of urban legends. It's not as preposterous. So I decided, instead of focusing on bad translations, I would focus on really, really good translations. We talked about in our advertising show, Coca-Cola, right, Chris? Where Coca-Cola, the rumor was in Mandarin, in Chinese, it would translate to...

Bite the Wax Tadpole. Yes, bite the Wax Tadpole, which is not true, but being a Mandarin speaker, I can see how, because Mandarin is a phonetic language, that it can be misconstrued to be that. So, not to make this Chinese culture hour, I really researched a lot to find examples of English names translated phonetically into Mandarin, but the meaning, the literal translation, also works too. Okay. So what I'm going to do, and this is, I did this a little bit complicated, but what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you the genre or the category of this product, and I'm going to tell

you the literal translation, and I'm going to say it in the phonetic translation and see if you can guess what this item I'm asking about. All right. All right. So here we go. This is a topical. This is a beverage, and it means every mouth can have happiness. In Mandarin, it is pronounced kukokola.

Coca-Cola. Every mouth can have happiness. Very good. That's really good. It's such a good one. Oh, man. This is the one from my movie research that led me to having this quiz. So it's a movie.

and the literal translation is Night without control. The Mandarin name is Poojiye. Boogie Nights? Yes, it is Bougu'i Nights. Yas is night in Mandarin. So I read somewhere online

where this was translated in Mandarin, it is a man with a special device. And I was like, I don't think so. I need a double check and it's called Buzi Yia. like boogie but buji also means without control so kind of fits there all right this is a band and it literally means mopi head four i'm going to guess the beetles yes what how is it pronounced ptoes oh oh so good that's so great this is a food item and literally it means manly bun with something

lucky. And the Mandarin pronunciation is Ji Shihambal. Cheese hamburger? Cheeseburger. Yes. Last one. This is a food item. And it literally means more power, more

flavor. And the Mandarin name is Dolei, doze. Doritos. Yes. It means what more power? More power? more flavor.

Wow. That could be their slogan like for American Doritos. Exactly. So yeah, it's rare. It's very rare where something you phonetically translate

actually have some sort of meaning. But if you work at it, you can try to figure something out. Thanks to good localization teams for these products and brands. That would be a fun job coming up with those localizations. So there you go. I like hearing you speak another language.

So that's our show. Thank you guys for joining me And thank you guys The listeners for listening Hope you learn a lot about Eggorns and misheard lyrics And Schmidt and Fastbender And all that stuff

And Hackman Oh my goodness You can find us on Zoom Marketplace On iTunes on Stitcher And also on our website Which is good jobbrain.com Also join us on Facebook and Twitter And check out our sponsor Bonobos

At bonobos.com And we'll see you guys next week Bye This is Jen and Jenny from ancient history fan girl, and we're here to tell you about Jenny's scorching historical romanticcy based on Alarika the Bissigoths, enemy of my dreams. Amanda Bouchet, best-selling author of the King, maker chronicle says, quote, this book has everything, high-stakes action, grit, ferocity, and

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