Ologies with Alie Ward - Etymology (WORD ORIGINS) with Helen Zaltzman of The Allusionist Podcast

Episode Date: March 5, 2019

The brilliant and dazzling Helen Zaltzman, host of The Allusionist podcast and person who technically for a living researches the origins of language and thus is an etymologist, visits Alie's apartment to chat about various word origins, gender in language, the Bible a.k.a. The Oxford English Dictionary, origins of the filthiest slang, emoji decoding, mediocrity, step parents, babies wearing glasses, Greek kimonos, the romance of languages and the fundamental truth that language is always changing whether you want it to or not. Also tomatoes, pliable boobs, avocados, and fish trails.The Allusionist Podcast, HelenZaltzman.comFollow Helen on Twitter & InstagramSponsor links: TrueandCo.com/ologies (code: ologies) & Amazon.com/popchips (code: 20ologies)This week's donation was made to POPStheclub.comMore links at alieward.com/ologies/etymologyBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a month: www.Patreon.com/ologiesOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes!Follow @Ologies on Twitter or InstagramFollow @AlieWard on Twitter or InstagramSound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media & Steven Ray MorrisTheme song by Nick ThorburnSupport the show: http://Patreon.com/ologies

Oh hey, it's the ghost of the succulent plant you somehow killed, just incredulously staring at you like, how? How? I'm a cactus. Allie Ward, back with another episode of Ologies. Okay, so don't galaxy brain too hard, but each word I'm saying has a history and a life span and a backstory and was probably born out of a grunt and then went through pubescence in another language, spelled with too many vowels.

And if you sat down and listened to its biography, you'd likely love it even more. But before we get into backstories and etymologies, a few complex words of thanks. Thanks to everyone supporting on Patreon this show and these audio files you've downloaded for free would not exist without the folks giving as little as a buck a month on patreon.com slash ologies. Thank you to everyone buying merch at ologiesmerch.com. Thanks to everyone who checks to make sure you're subscribed. And for spending an actual nanosecond just rating the podcast and a minute or two or

three leaving reviews for me to creepily enjoy when I'm feeling like a bucket of old oatmeal with a mouth, which happens. This week, smacks more she's, ma'am says, this podcast is fantastic for getting myself through boring car rides and long days at work. The host, my father, Allie Ward, is captivating and asks her guests all of the right questions. Now for some reason, the host, my father, Allie Ward, had me actually cackling out loud when I read it. Also, DJ Liz13, I creeped your review about your late father and it got me teary and I'm

sending you hugs. Okay, etymology. Oh, I've wanted to cover this topic since the day I first laid eyes on a list of ologies back in 2002, so strong as my thirst. I include some etymology in every episode, you know that. But what's the etymology of etymology? This is like your mirror image staring at your real face or one hand washing the other. Okay, so etymology comes from the Greek, etymos, meaning truth.

So this ologist studied English and language at St. Catherine's College at the University of Oxford, England, and went on to become a writer, co-host of the long-running comedy podcast Answer Me This, and then began a linguistics and etymology podcast called The Illusionist in 2015. She's known as the etymological lodger and I had so many people send drooly feverish messages that I should interview her about word origins. And I said to myself, and them, sure, right, how about if I also interview Beyonce while I'm at it?

I can't get her, but somehow I was able to get her attention via Twitter and convince her to come to my home, aka my apartment, and hang out on my couch for an hour and talk language and to say I like her would be a gross understatement. I'm so into her, she's the best. So we talk about the fundamental truth that language is always, always changing, whether you want it to or not, and about, of course, various word origins, Latin, gender in languages, the Bible, aka the Oxford English Dictionary, slang, emojis, the pliability of boobs, mediocrity, step-parents, babies in glasses, Greek, the romance languages, and more with host of The

Illusionist Podcast, in person who technically for a living, researches the origins of language and thus is an etymologist, Helen Salzman. Do people put an extra L in there a lot? No, actually, that is not one of the regular spelling mistakes, but they see the Z's and they panic. Do you say Z is in Z or Zebra? Well, I say Z when I'm in Z saying countries, but I'm on your turf, so I've translated it.

Yeah, look at that. Do you say Zebra? I do say Zebra. Is it Zebra here? Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, so here's my rubric for when I'm in the States. If it's a different word like Z, Z, or Coriander, cilantro, I'll say the different word, but

it is harder for me to use the correct American pronunciation if it's the same word. So it's hard for me to say tomato because it sounds just wrong when I say it. I can't do it properly. My mouth won't form a proper American shape to do the word properly. Tomato. Tomato. Tomato. It's stupid, isn't it?

Tomato sounds so much fancier. I don't know. I think it does. It does. It's not even an English word. I've got it from South America. Quick aside, the word tomato comes from the Naotal, a language of what's known historically as the Aztec Empire, for the swelling fruit.

And thus, a tomato is what people call the hot girl in the 1920s. Language experts think this is due to plump, juicy connotations. Now, as long as we're just starting this out on the horneous foot, another fun, produce aisle conversation you can have loudly is that avocado comes from the Naotal for testicle. Now, how long have you been interested in language? I remember first becoming interested in language when I was fairly small. I was, I think, seven, and I started, I went to very old-fashioned schools, so I started learning French and Latin at a very young age.

And I was like, oh, that word seems similar to this word in English. And it's a bit like when you see Homeland or something where someone's got a wall with lots of newspaper clippings joined together with string. You understand. It's a timeline. So I was like, oh, I wonder if these have got things in common. And also, I grew up in quite a verbose household. So I was the youngest.

I was an accident. So there's quite a bit of time between me and my elder brothers, who are both very witty and and good at talking. And I just thought, if I'm going to say anything, then I really have to bring my A game. It's just a form of survival to be verbally deft from a young age. Did you talk early? I don't know, because I don't think anyone was paying attention. But apparently I was an early reader.

My mum says I was an early reader, but I remember her teaching me to read. So I think before that, I was just looking at books with the appearance of reading. You just had they're like, why is she wearing bifocals? She's two. I did have glasses from one and a half. How did you know? Really? Not bifocals till I was 14.

I mean, yeah, you started losing that near sighted. Yeah, it was it was not many pictures of my childhood. Really? Yeah, these sort of like pink plastic thick glasses. And then sometimes they would put a bandaid over one lens to strengthen the other eye. Well, they used to put it over my eye, but then ripping it off is quite painful. That's a good time. Babies and glasses are the cutest babies.

Sort of. Yes. Glasses styles have improved. No, they're always babies and glasses are always cute. Is it like babies that look like angry little old men? Like who look like old cultures? Yes, exactly. That's a good fun.

They're a kinder culture. Yeah. Or like a baby wearing a tiny bow tie. Yes, I guess like an old man in like a diaper with a pacifier isn't as cute. But when you reverse it, it's good, you know? So unfair. So now, when did you start making language your living? When did you start writing professionally?

When did you start getting into etymology as a career? Well, I studied summer university. I did an English degree, but I did this special course that only 15 people did in the whole university and it was all it stopped at 1400. Again, she took an English language course that stopped at the year 1400. I just imagine the vellum, the ancient diphthongs that deteriorated antiquities. Why did it stop at 1400? You're never going to find anything original to say about Shakespeare

and there's much less to read, which frees up more time for doing extra curriculars. But also there was a lot of emphasis on Old and Middle English, which I always found very interesting and certain clarity in the literature. They got to the point, they're like, it's a religious allegory. It's a body limerick and we're going to die at 35, so you just stick to the point. It's oversimplifying. And yet there's a little kind of truth there. So I was very interested in university and then just afterwards,

a dream etymology job came up at the Oxford English Dictionary. Oh, my God. And so I applied for it and I only got to the second round. I didn't get very far in because now I know what's involved in being a dictionary etymologist. I realize that I would have been extremely ill-suited because that is a job that requires a lot of precision, a lot of dispassion. Like you're supposed to write dictionary entries with very little character in. They're supposed to be kind of authoritative, but not jaunty, not funny.

And you have to be so methodical and I'm not methodical at all. So not a lot of room for pizazz. No, except for the entry for pizazz, if they have enough written citations for pizazz. Pizazz, of course, meaning style or flair, vitality. Now, this word emerged in the 1930s, etymologist think from showbiz slang. But for me, pizazz will forever be tied to the Mexican pizza at Taco Bell, which was first introduced decades ago as, yes, a pizazz pizza. Get struck by the never-before-taste of pizazz pizza.

I will always remember my mom having to hang her head out the car window and scream into the order box, a pizazz pizza. When they changed the name to Mexican pizza, something inside me died. I've been sad about it for decades. I mourned. OK, also, Helen studied English at Oxford, so word, origins, language, et cetera. And then she said she didn't really do anything with that for about another 12 years when she started the illusionist. But on Answer Me This, they got a lot of word, origin questions throughout the year.

So she was always kind of flexing that proverbial muscle all along. Did you know when you were studying, when you were getting your degree that you wanted to go into historical language? Did you know that etymology maybe was something you wanted to do? It just didn't seem like a plausible thing to do. But also, I'm very bad at thinking ahead, so I wasn't really thinking much beyond it. When I was little, I was like, I just want to get to university because it felt like freedom.

And then when I was there, I was just very much enjoying being there because it was like freedom. And I was like, you just deal with the job stuff afterwards. And then that took a decade. So an etymologist may be a linguist, a dictionary writer, a podcaster about language and also even a murderer, as detailed in Simon Winchester's book, The Professor and the Mat Man, which is about the compilation of the Oxford English Dictionary

that began in 1857. And it was led by a professor by the name of James Murray. And the overseeing committee was like, man, one person, Dr. W. C. Miner, has submitted over 10,000 entries and etymologies. We should send him like a muffin basket or a thank you. What a badass. And then they found out Dr. Miner was a civil war doctor who became an inmate in an asylum for the criminally insane.

And then they were like, hmm, still going to use these definitions. Oh, that's cool. So one of the the very important compilers of the Oxford English Dictionary was a guy who was in prison for murder, but he had a lot of time to sort through written citations of words because they still have to go off written citations of things to prove that the word existed and the time that it existed and that it's it means the things that you think it means.

And they can demonstrate that. They just have to be able to demonstrate everything with written citations so they collect loads and loads of written examples for words. And also they have to prove that it's important enough and in sustained usage for long enough. So it's not like you could provide a hundred written citations for a word you've just made up and it would immediately catch on. That is so fetch.

But if you could get it to catch on and enough other people to use it could get it in the dictionary alley. Little project. OK, so some of the OED's added words this year, by the by, were TGIF, Burkini and Haterade, some interesting choices. Do you keep up with the OED each year with the new words added? No, because I think that's usually a press release bit of game. Don't you? Because they just want to annoy people.

That's a good point. Often. They're usually the most annoying words. Yes, exactly. Yeah, they know they're trolling people. Oh, God, that's so sinister and wonderful. Yeah, I like the relish with which a lot of the dictionaries have taken to the social media age. A lot of them have very salty Twitter accounts. Oh, God, yes. And you learn some good words.

But also the print edition of dictionaries, there's a limit to the number of words they can put in there. So some have to go. It's difficult for words to enter, but there's a lot of room on the internet so they can they can track those words and something that may only be briefly useful, like on fleek. That can enter the dictionary quickly, but it doesn't necessarily have to stay there

if it was just, you know, a few years of on fleekness. On fleek sounds so much better coming with a British accent. I don't know any other set in quotation marks. Right. I go on fleek. I've never managed to say it in an actually descriptive way. I don't think anyone other than the original Vine poster. Abras on fleek. Peaches Monroe.

Is that what her name? Yeah. Good job. How do you know that? Well, I have first studied the etymology of on fleek. That's why you're the best. Oh, gosh. But yeah, I I I'm too old to I'm too old to say it without the quotation marks. Yeah, we all are. Now, at what point did you get the idea for the illusionist?

How did that develop? Right. Well, around 2014, I I just had the idea of doing a show that was called word detective. And I was like, what does that mean? So I worked back a bit. And then my friend, Roman Marz, who makes 99% invisible, had just founded Radiotopia. And I knew that he was interested in getting me to do some stuff.

And he came to stay with me in London in the summer of 2014. And so while he was jet lagged and vulnerable, I was walking around the park and I said, I've had an idea for a show. It's a bit like your show, but for language instead of architecture and design. And he was like, OK. So they dug around for the financing because she wouldn't have been able to do answer me this plus the illusionist plus handle extra time of a day job.

And as someone who hasn't mailed her Christmas presents yet in March, I get this. Like podcasting for the first many years was financially rather painful. Oh, sure. Pursuit. Yeah. So that was how it started. He was like, OK, we can we can make this financially viable. And also it was just a slightly quieter time in podcasting,

then. Yeah, it is. It is quite a din of different shows. Yes, certainly very noisy. And now you must have had a bit of a field day when you're first coming up with words that you wanted to explore. I mean, how did you decide which words get in? Well, there's a long Google Doc with potential ideas that I've had since before the show again.

And I have done not that many of those ideas because a lot of it is just what can I actually get done? Like how can I think to pursue this? Who can I talk with about it? Who will agree to be on the show or knows about it? What's an angle that is not just going to be really dry? So a lot of it is what am I curious about and what don't I know about? Because if I feel like I know where something's going to go,

I'm not very interested in making an episode about it or if it's very familiar. But if it's patching up my own ignorance, I am a team of one until actually, although it was pitched as an etymology show, it hasn't really been a lot about that because what it turns out and far more interested in is human behavior and how things are applicable now. Like what's resonant to people now? So rather than being a historian, Helen prefers to look into the current usage of words and terms and how they kind of roll around our brains and out of our face.

And then it's finding bits of information to give to people. And so, yeah, it's gone in a very different direction to what I thought. But sometimes it's it's like, I'll have insomnia. I remember I had insomnia and often what I do is I wonder whether this word comes from where I think it does. And then if it didn't, I think, oh, that's worth making a note of it. Surprising. So I remember in the first few months of the illusionist,

I thought, I wonder, I'll just check in the night whether whether step as in step parent just means you're a step away from the biological lineage. And it doesn't. It means grief. I thought, oh, and if I didn't know that, then a lot of listeners are not going to know that. And so I firstly was trying to get someone to speak who was from a museum of

of orphans and abandoned children in London. So I thought they would be interesting on the history of of the family in that respect. And they would not speak to me. Really? Yeah. And then I thought, I'll do it differently because you have a lot of wicked stepmothers in folklore and Aaron Mankey from the podcast Law. We were kind of internet friends and I was like, wouldn't you be interested? And it was just before his show was like really too big for him to be

way too busy to do this. And he came with like a lot of fascinating research about how, you know, you didn't really have a step parent unless someone had died because divorce was uncommon and therefore step parents got pretty bad rap. And I also got people. I just put a Facebook post up saying if you've got feelings about step in your own family existence, just record yourself talking about them. I've got a somewhat complicated family and have several step parents,

although I never really call them that. I've always just known them as their first name. It could be a bit jarring to explain how you related to this person. You refused to call your dad. And that was very compelling. So a lot of people said, you know, I'd never come to see thought about it. And now I have, I think I hate it. Really? Yeah.

So it's just a very interesting montage to me of how people dealt with this word as as children or as step parents or step siblings or the different words that they use. Like I think in Sweden, bonus is the term, which I felt was much more positive. That is more positive. Yeah. It's my bonus, dad. Right. Right. Yeah. You don't wickedness.

Yeah. You don't you don't think of someone who's getting angry at your t-ball games and secretly hates you. You know, right? Yeah. Who's just trying to take all of your parents' money and then leave, kill them and leave. Like when you when you look at a house and there's a bonus room and you're like so much possibility, right? More than expected.

Yes. Because it's a bonus. It's a bonus. Yeah. So side note, the word bonus comes from the Latin for bone for a good thing. The word bonus comes from the Latin for bond, a good thing. So somewhere there is a sweet, nice step dad driving carpool or a step mom working her ass off to put together a cool birthday party. And y'all, it's OK to shed a tear about this bonus, folks. You're good.

And now is there something about the elasticity of language? I feel like that's kind of what we all love about etymology. But is that rooted? Is your interest rooted in human behavior and how we keep morphing things? Yes, my interest very much in human behavior. And I think that's what partly got me interested in etymology in the first place was just a lot of it is a little idiosyncratic. And you can see these signs of of how people would have behaved several hundred years ago.

So there's a lot of mistakes in how words have evolved. It's not necessarily logical. And I think that was appealing that it's not these straight parts. Another thing I learned about doing the show was that I'm not a language prescriptivist. I was such a pedant when I was a child, a nightmare, particularly to my mom. And now that but it's unsustainable when you when you know anything about how language behaves, you can't keep it up because there's just so many things contradicting it and there's a lot of cognitive dissonance.

If you want to keep up your pedantry, but also after a while, I was like, you're carrying around a lot of pointless anger, just just not necessary. So that was a positive surprise, I think it was just being amenable to how language is going to change and has always changed, particularly the English language that has that has evolved in much more rapidly than a lot of other languages that are deliberately kept the same. But if you know about English, you're like, OK, this is what happens. People use it the ways that they need it to be used.

So if there is a gap, then people will fill it with either a word that they've decided to use in a different way or they will invent one. Gretchen, stop trying to make fetch happen. And, you know, a lot of it is driven by that kind of necessity. You can't control it. And even if it doesn't necessarily make sense, it's never made sense. And so you might not like it, but you have to understand that this is a linguistic process. Now, what is it about English that has made it evolve so rapidly?

And also, we're having studied Latin. Where do you see we grab the roots from Latin, from Greek? Oh, yeah, English is such a mutt of a language, which is why it's so fascinating. It's a problem as well, which is more to do with its later history. So English kind of came about originally from a bunch of invasions. So there were native languages in the British Isles. But then there was the Roman invasion, which I think was 50 BC to about 400 AD. And then Germanic forces invaded around 500 AD.

And then Vikings and then 1066, the Normans. So you get a lot of French influence, but also a lot of Latin through French. And so at that point, you had like the language of governance being Latin, and then the language of posh people being French. But then like kind of normal people still speaking Anglo-Saxon, which is like quite a Germanic version of Anglo-Saxon. And then that kind of coalesces into Middle English that then becomes modern English. So I think about 70 percent of English words have some Latin roots,

but a lot of those Latin roots would have come from Greek or they didn't come directly from the Romans. And then you've got what I call, euphemistically, Britain's enthusiastic foreign policy. So it was not only people coming in and invading the country. It's also us going to other parts of the world, a lot of other parts of the world and sticking our dicks in them. Yeah. And so English has happened in lots of different places, but also we found words in those places and brought them back.

Or, you know, we brought back things we found like potatoes and thus the word with them. So that happens a ton. So you've got like this very idiosyncratic thing, whereas French, you've got an academy keeping French the same. So they decide on whether you're allowed gender neutral pronouns or whatever. They don't like this. It's a very gendered language. Whereas English doesn't have that kind of control

and has resisted that kind of control. They've just they've tried and it hasn't really taken off. By the way, if you hear something that sounds like vacuuming, it's because there's someone outside my door vacuuming. I run a very professional podcast studio here. It's just vacuuming. People have heard it before. They've heard it before.

Yeah. So why did Latin steal from Greek so much? That is a really good question. I think because you had a lot of Greek power before you had ancient Roman Empire power. And also there is a lot of cultural crossover. So just a lot of our there's basically like three parents for most languages. And so again, it's just going back to the root word.

And then it being in different locations, evolved into slightly different versions of the words. And when it comes to finding the root word of something, what's been one of the more surprising entries or what are some of your favorite etymologies? Because there's a story behind every all of them. Yes, although frustrating, often the story is like, we don't know the pathway doesn't go very far,

particularly with slangs because they don't have the written citation. So they can't prove where a slang came from because it's usually in people's mouths way before it's written down. I really like the etymology of the word mediocre. And I don't know why it is, but it means halfway up a jagged hill. Really? Yeah. What an evocative thing. God, I never knew that one. And is it does that because I would have thought

to get halfway up a jagged hill, you have to be really quite good. Yeah, that doesn't seem like an easy path or just like the absence of any particular quality. It seems like a hard, a hard climb. Yeah, how many jagged hills were these people climbing? I don't know. Must be quite a lot. If you can only get halfway up was a burn. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, well, we just scampered right to the top before breakfast. Yeah, so I find that very fascinating and I don't understand why it is seems like quite the story. Yeah, I didn't know that. I have you ever heard the etymology for buxom? No, that sounds fun. Such a good one. This is one of my favorite etymologies.

It comes from pliable and then compliant and then friendly and then beautiful and then sexy and then boobs. Wow. So it wasn't that the boobs were pliable. No, the person was pliable and that's a sexy trait to some. Evidently, yeah. Wow. So which is one of those weird twists and turns that you're just thinking about it, having to morph at every stage of the way.

Yeah. Googling buxom woman will not side note get you any returns of pliable branches. Now, speaking of searches, where does Helen go to first uncover a words history? She says Entom online and dictionary.com are her preferred sources as she's constantly traveling with her husband and she can't haul around a shelf full of dusty reference books. Come on.

And you're kind of wandering about, which is what a life. You and your husband. Ridiculous. Scientists, physicists. Yeah, you guys are. I would say that you're traipsing about. Yeah, we're traipsing. Yeah. Guiding about.

So you bop around. Yeah, we bop around to different countries. And so you're a wandering etymologist. That's so romantic. Wandering audio trainer. If you would have thought as a college student that you would get to travel the world while doing etymology. I know, right? Bananas and getting paid.

Living the dream. Living the absolute dream. Well, I couldn't even allow myself to have that dream because I thought you don't want to be disappointed. Well, and podcast didn't exist. No, they did not. When it comes to like a goal with etymology, do you feel like with language you can use your platform

to have people see each other differently? Do you ever feel like you can fix some ills of the world with language? Yeah, when I'm feeling evangelical, I think so. It is an entertainment show, first and foremost, and it's supposed to distract people on a commute or when they can't sleep or when they're feeling anxious or whatever. But then it's just when you get into language and you're thinking about all the different ways it can be used.

I think a lot of it is about empathy because the more sensitive you become to all that, you become more aware of your own usage and how other people might interpret it and the various things they might mean with their usage. So it forces you to think about other people more in their communication and the endless variety thereof. And also, just if you if you get into your hangups,

you can often realize that a lot of them are about snobbery or a way of controlling people almost by telling them that they're saying something in a way you disagree with. And so removing yourself from that or encouraging other people just to just to not focus on that. I think that is quite important because it's just more compassionate. And the etymology of compassionate, it's late Latin for calm plus patty, so to suffer together.

And yes, the root of passion is to suffer, but compassion is to feel the pain of others, which is terribly moving. So I'd say that is the the more serious thing. And you mentioned a live show you did recently was about gender pronouns and preferred usage. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've been doing a lot of work about gender in language that's it's all festering into into something. I'm not quite sure what form it all emerge in yet.

So it's about things like titles, like Mr. and Mrs. and Ms. and gender pronouns and just how to me having gender in the English language doesn't really make much sense. I don't think it's necessary. And some languages have far less gender in that there are a lot of languages that have no gender pronouns at all, languages where they don't use titles. And I'm curious to know whether the absence of those things has any effect on the way that people communicate with each other or relate to each other.

And it's certainly not the case that languages that have no gender pronouns don't have gender imbalance, but I'm just thinking. Why don't we default to gender neutrality? And then people can always opt in to a gendered pronoun if they want. But I feel like it would save a lot of bother if it was just default. Yeah, yeah, why do you think that there is resistance to that? That's a really good question. I think some people fear change and change can consciously or unconsciously

to people just be almost insulting because it's like you're wrong rather than just you do a thing and it's not necessarily wrong, but it's not necessarily the permanent way. And I think also some people are just not comfortable with the idea of a different kind of society. And I think I mean, I see this even in myself, like when you've when you've been raised in this sort of very binary gender way and there's certain certain gender limits and so on,

I felt like I kind of moulded a lot of myself to working around the constraints of that just to kind of optimise the way that I could exist in this thing. I didn't really agree with and make it as irrelevant to myself as possible, but I couldn't possibly escape it. But then if that crumbles, who am I? There are some people who've adjusted themselves a lot more to living in the patriarchy or whatever and take advantage of that male and female. And then if it's taken away, some people are like, yes, like I feel so freed.

And other people are like, yeah, who am I and what am I supposed to do and how am I supposed to benefit? Like they don't know what the benefit is to them of a fairer society because it's not they might think it's not. So I think that is scary to people. And some people want neat categorisation of everything. But I have a lot of arguments as to as to why, you know, it's very easy to give people the right pronoun.

It doesn't really affect. It doesn't really affect you. But also you was originally a plural pronoun that we also use in the singular. Yeah. And people have adjusted to that because they've had a few hundred years to deal with it. And so that's, oh, so you was the plural form and thou was the singular form and the informal form. And you would use you to be polite and then people were so polite, you just became the dominant form. Really? Yeah. I didn't know that.

And people can handle that. So they, I mean, it's not such a leap. People use they as a kind of general pronoun anyway, like when they're not sure who they're referring to. So if I said, oh, I'm going to stay with my cousin, you might say, oh, where do they live? Yeah. Without it being a political thing. But as soon as you introduce the politics to it, some people are their fuses lit.

I wonder if part of it is just a resentment that in newer, maybe generation gets a benefit of something that we didn't, you know? Yes. I think about what my life would have been like if I weren't gendered so much. And I wonder if anyone just is pissed that they're like, you get that? I didn't get that. Right. You know?

I definitely think there's some part of that. Which is the worst reason to withhold something from someone. The absolute worst, most petty bitchy. Yeah. I'm very interested in how language is used to manipulate in a positive and negative way. It can be used for that a lot. And so I was reading this like 80s classic of business schools kind of manual, which is about the language of persuasion.

And it was talking about just how it's much easier to double down on something that seems like a bad decision than to admit that it was bad and do something different. Oh my God. And now you start seeing that in just all sorts of things. That was in an instructional book? Yeah. Oh, that's horrifying. That explains a lot of our politics now.

It really does, doesn't it? You start seeing it everywhere. I keep wanting to do an episode just called Apologies with someone who is a good mediator who can just explain the best way to apologize. Yeah, that could just be a whole mini series in itself. There's so much to apologize for. Can we do some Patreon questions? Oh, yeah.

Okay. This is rapid fire. It's great. It's lightning round. We'll get to as many as we can. So before listener questions from Patreon, there may be some info on some items and services that I use and like and who support the show. Also, each week, a portion of the proceeds from ads goes to a charity of theologist's

choosing. And this week, Helen shows PopsTheClub.com. And their mission is to transform the lives of teens who have loved ones in prison or in jail. Pops stands for pain of the prison system. And they establish these high school clubs for these kids to gather. They can be empowered through creative expression, writing, poetry, emotional support. And they also publish a book full of the student's creative work, writing and poetry. So it's PopsTheClub.com is who Helen picked.

Okay. Patreon questions. And I'm going to go in order received. So I didn't categorize these. It's very fair. It's very fair. Adrienne Van Halem asked, what's the origin of the phrase red herring? Oh crap.

I did know this from Answer Me This. But I can't remember. Okay. I'll insert it on your side. Okay. I look this up. And supposedly it's from smoked herrings turning red when they're cured and fugitives leaving trails of them to fool and confuse blood hounds.

So a red herring is like a gross trail of fish that a dog thinks is you. This episode started off so horny. I don't know what happened. Christina Choi says, do you have a favorite word in history of other than mediocre? Yeah. Mediocre was good. Any second? I think, I mean, there are lots, but now my mind's gone blank. Never heard of a word history before.

Oh. Yeah. No. I mean, that's what happens when you get like a direct question like, what's my favorite film? I've never seen a film. Ever. What is one?

Yeah. What was the last word that you learned? Do you remember? Oh, there are words that I have to look up every time like lacuna. I just cannot remember what lacuna means. It's a great, great word. You know how I learned that word? Did you ever see Eternal Sunshine?

I did. And that was how I learned of the word, but I still haven't. The best. A lacuna, are you ready for this? It's a bookbinding term, meaning a chunk of the glued pages that have detached from the spine and are missing. And in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which was written by the genius Charlie Kaufman,

the company that can wipe away specific memories is called Lacuna Incorporated. But why remember a destructive love affair? Here at Lacuna, we have perfected a safe, effective technique for the focused erasure of troubling memories. Just can't. It just won't fix in my mind. Well, there's a blank spot where lacuna should be. Yeah.

There's a lacuna. Ah! Where there's a lacuna. That's how I'm to remember it. Thank you. Boom. It really guided me through that. Erica Smith asked,

do you have a favorite website to research the etymology of words or phrases? Etom online. Strongly recommend. Awesome. Bob White. Hi, Bob. Just says, this is an imperative, not even an inquisitive. Explain Q, Q-U-E-U-E.

Well, it's where you stand in line with people. In French, we got the word from French. In French, Q is pronounced cuh and means tail. So that's very cute, isn't it? Like a dog's little cuh. Oh, that's adorable. Yeah. I do love that having context for all these words.

It's like seeing someone's face and being like, okay, and then getting to know them as a person. Do you know? Yeah. Oh, I love it. Katie Cobb, why is the F word so versatile? It's a great word, isn't it? A lot of the swears are very flexible,

but particularly that one because it can be noun, verb, affectionate, sexual, insult. Yeah, it's very handy. Yeah. What is the etymology of that word? Oh, that is a hard one to know because it's old, but also because it's kind of slangy. So when people make up an acronym for it, it's definitely not an acronym. It's like hundreds of years older than that. But a lot of the etymologies of swears are just a bit unsatisfactory

because they don't really know. But it wasn't such a rude word as it is now. Like the C-bomb wasn't such a rude word as it is now. Like religious swears were more brewed in like 14th century when these swears were around and body parts and sexual ones, not so much as the religious ones. But yeah, I think when people are down on swearing, you just think, well, what word can you use in as many varied ways as the F-bomb?

It is a Swiss army knife, I'm cussing. There's nothing it can't do. That is a wonderful way to describe it. I still can't say the C-word. That's not a word that comes... I mean, I think that's more of a British word, but... Yeah, I didn't realize... That's been very educational to me making this show about language.

I knew that there were differences in American vocabularies versus English, but I was less aware of the nuances of usage, because I hadn't spent as much time in the States. And there are certain things you don't realize until they're pointed out. And yes, so I think the fourth episode, The Illusionist, was about the C-bomb. And in Britain, it is a strong swear. It's one of the strongest, but you still get people who kind of...

It can be an affectionate one. I, ah, you old C-bomb. In context, you wouldn't say that to someone you weren't very confident would understand the intent. Of course. Yeah. There's almost up tails, but... Danielle Riviera asks,

what is your biggest word-related pet peeve? Oh, I have a lot, but I'm always trying to confront my prejudices. And some of them, I think, will never leave, but I can just not give them more room. And then others have really dissipated over the years. But at the moment, I am really keeping an eye on the word community. And I think that people using it should think, is there another word I can use?

Because I think it's being used thoughtlessly. And so when people say the black community or the gay community, that sounds like it's 40 people that meet in a village hall and they all have the same viewpoint. And I can understand why something might be quite specific. So you might have the gay community in a particular city. But when you're talking about millions of people, it's too small a word for that.

And I heard someone say the female community, and I was like, that is half the world. That is not appropriate. So if you're using community, I think there are different nouns you could use or different ways to reframe the adjective that you're using. Like science community, you could say scientists. So part of it to me is an efficiency thing,

but partly also there's a condescension in it sometimes. And I'm always thinking, why is that there? What's it kind of covering over? What would be a better word in the context of the black or the gay community? I agree with you completely. Yeah, often it's people. People. Yeah.

Boom. Yeah, yeah. Done. Yeah, gay people. But then it's like, what are you trying to say with such a big generalization? Should you break that down a bit more? So indicative of perhaps what you're saying

doesn't reflect the thoughts of everyone. Right, just be careful of the generalizations. 00:41:58,360 --> 00:41:59,320 God, that's a great note. Danielle Rivera also wants to know, how many people assume that you study insects or that you have a podcast about this? Quite a lot.

And confusingly, right behind your head are some beautiful insects. I have a big gross dead bug collection on one wall of my apartment and I'm just realizing how creepy that must be for visitors. But Helen is very wonderful and she's compassionate. But yes, etymology and entomology. But I can understand why people would mix them up because they're not exactly words you need in your everyday vocabulary.

No. And yeah, I wouldn't necessarily remember if I didn't particularly care about either. Oh, sure. Yeah, they're not, they don't, they don't roll off the tongue often. So when people get it wrong, I think, well, at least they tried. Yeah, they tried, they're so close.

They, they, they, they busted out a tricky word. So, so close. That'd be like if someone bought you a shoe and it was a seven and a half and not an eight. You'd be like, would you look at how close it is? Yeah. Um, Ivy Crutchfield wants to know, can you ask for the origin of coccyx?

Well, that's a really interesting one. I could look it up. Sure. I don't keep all the words in my brain. A coccyx, side note, is a tailbone. So technically, there were two present while recording this. Also present next to us on the coffee table is a hulking five pound dictionary of etymology

that I've had for 20 years. It's one of the first things I'd rescue should all of my belongings become threatened by fire. And that's not true. I'd probably run out of the house without pants and then just order a new book online with the insurance money. But anyway, we looked it up for you Ivy. Oh, this is good actually.

It's from the Greek word cuckoo. Supposedly called by the ancient Greek physician Galen, who is very influential in the history of medicine, because the bone in humans supposedly resembles a cuckoo's beak. Wow. Your butt bones a bird beak. Well, isn't that nice and illiterative? There you go.

I'm so glad they asked. Thanks Ivy. Lovely question. Mads Clement wants to know, what's the best way to take down linguistic prescriptivists? Every time someone's like, that's a made up word, I want to do murder. Yeah. Well, all the words are made up ultimately.

There you go. Yeah. Language evolves and you can't stop it. But you can be swept away by the tide if you just stand there not moving. I like that idea once again. Language evolves and you can't stop it. But you can be swept away by the tide if you just stand there not moving.

Katie Spino wants to know, can you do the thing that the dad in my Big Fat Greek wedding did and trace any word back to Greece? Give me a word. Any word. And I'll show you how the root of that word is Greek. Okay. No, no.

Can't happen. Okay, Mr. Portacollis. How about the word kimono? Kimono. Kimono, kimono, kimono. M. Maurer wants to know, what is your opinion on starting essays with? Webster's Dictionary defines excess.

That is desperate. Yeah, don't do it. And also don't start anything with, it is a truth universally acknowledged in a private prejudice riff because I see a lot of journalists starting articles with that and are like, you're out of ideas.

What happens in the next paragraph, if you're trying to do that beginning? What happens next? And then you could work back to opening with something more relevant. So that's tired, played out, done. It's rather tired and played out, but also what is it you're trying to say by citing that?

It feels like that's your training wheels and you're not ready to take them off your bike. Anna Thompson mentioned the unnecessary use and someone else answered that about back in the day when you took out an ad and a paper or they charged by the letter of the neighbors. Oh, unfortunately, that is made up, but it's a really wonderful story that I appreciate.

It is just that American English is somewhat more streamlined than British English, which I appreciate. So British English might have the use because it's like, oh, a lot of those words came from French. And in American English, you're like, why do we need it? Because you can't hear it.

It doesn't add anything, get rid of it. Or like theater, you know, ER, rather than we have it still R-E. And it doesn't make sense that we still have that. But I think we're in England still attached to the past and have resisted attempts to make the language more logical. Whereas in the States, you're less fettered by that history. Oh, yeah.

I didn't know that. Yeah. I totally bought the thing that it was... It's a great story. A lot of the really attractive stories, unfortunately, are false because easier to make up a great story than to actually have one in life.

Well, then you've just debunked some flim flam. Oh, shit. I have loved that. Puncturing dreams, that's me. No, I loved it. Ray Cash wants to know, did all language evolve from an origin language? There's like three origin languages,

but then I think it's not even that straightforward because there are some where they don't really act like any other languages. Like Basque in northern Spain. It's not like Spanish, but it's also not really like anything. It's exciting to finish. That's very unusual.

Oh, I've heard about that. So they think three origin languages, perhaps? Yeah. Okay. Yes. I was surprised by what are Romance languages. I thought I knew them, and then is English not a Romance language?

It's sort of. Romance languages is broadly languages that were heavily influenced by Latin. So like Spanish, Italian, French, English, 60-ish percent. Yeah, I didn't know that. I thought totally that it was. Carrie Sturdard wants to know, are there any synonyms for the most hated word moist?

Moist. Do you hate the word moist? I'm at this point, it's an underdog. Right. You know what I mean? Like can moist live? Can it just do its business? I don't hate it.

It's fine. I don't hate it. I tend to think of like dew or grass more than I think of. Well, that's a lovely form of moisture. I suppose the people who hate it may be thinking of bodily crevices. I think so. And that's their prejudice showing.

Yes, it is. Yeah. Because other words as well, like damp, I mean, if you're moist from the rain, like a raincoat, damp, is that better? Is that worse? A bodily crevice could also be damp. Sure.

I feel like moist has a certain heat to it that damp lacks. Oh, it's so steaminess rotten, chilliness. It's good that we're figuring these things out. Anyone who hates that word, hopefully you hate it more now. Christopher Enver wants to know, how do you feel about people using emojis instead of words? Which emoji are you? Well, Grandma here knows that she's outmoded and not,

I don't speak emoji. I don't use them. My mom sent me one the other day and that was a shock. So she's on board. People don't even send them to you? They do, but I don't necessarily interpret them in the way they're supposed to be interpreted because I don't understand how you're supposed to use them

and how they affect what has been said because my assumption years ago was, they're just reiterating what's in the words. But I don't think that is the case. They're influencing how the words are supposed to be interpreted. But that is the part that I don't know. So it's a bit of a problem, I think, that I don't speak emoji. But what I don't like is that the visuals are controlled

by someone else. So if you were handwriting, you probably wouldn't do your own emoji. There's hundreds of them and it would take a long time. So they'll find that a bit prescriptive by Unicode deciding what can be expressed. So we may only have 26 letters in the English language and some punctuation, but there's a lot of combinations mathematically.

Do you have any emojis that really irk you? I think it would be unfair to pick on some when I don't understand what the nail varnish one means or the dancing one. Helen, I got you. So does Emojipedia.com. So according to them, the nail polish emoji is often used to display an air of nonchalance or indifference.

And the dancing emoji is used to represent a sense of fun or as a positive affirmation, like saying, great. Also, the study of pictures representing thoughts is called the Curiology. And I do have an emoji expert lined up. Should I do it? Are y'all nail polish or dancing about it? In terms of speaking in GIFs too, how do you feel about that?

Again, I don't fully understand, but I do enjoy that more. It seems inventive. But I think it's also because there you often get a facial expression, a moving facial expression. That means more to me than a cartoon facial expression or someone who's sticking their tongue out and there's a dollar bill on it in emoji. I don't know that one either.

Well, I painted a picture of you. If I put a dollar bill on my tongue now, you'll understand what the emoji is doing. Dollar, dollar bills, y'all. But actually, this brings up the point of GIF versus GIF. Yeah, right. You pronounce it the way that the person who coined it says. Exactly.

But I say GIF because then people know what you're talking about. Well, which is it? Well, it's a recently made up word. I think that if they wanted it to be pronounced GIF, they probably should have gone with a J instead of a G. All right. I know I'm rebelling against the originator, but I'm on GIF because it's less equivocal.

Can't mix it up with the lemons. Oh, well, what do you think is going to win out over time? GIF, GIF, GIF, GIF. All right. I'm shocked that we say different things. I thought it'd be like if someone says your name is Helene. Yeah, right. And then, but then again, if enough people call you Helene,

your name is Helene. Right. Yeah. My mom tweaked the pronunciation of the last name, so. That's what it is. Right. That's what it is now. I don't even know what it was two generations ago

because it's immigrant names. They mutate. Do you know what it means? It's like salt, salt, vendor, something like that probably. Oh, yeah. Well, salt was currency. So. Yeah.

So, useful condiment. This dollar bill on my tongue emoji. That's what that means. If people started doing that in real life, where they acted a lot more like emoji and they carried the props around with them, then maybe I could get on board. All you really need to know is that if you get an eggplant text.

Right. So, lascivious. Yeah. Better be from your husband. Oh, Tyler Q says first off, huge illusionist fan. Come back to Melbourne. I promise we won't poison you again. It's not your fault.

It's not your fault I got it in Australia. It's my fault. Was it? It's not their fault. A lot of Australians were self-blaming. It's not their fault. And also wonderful healthcare that's free for Brits. Appreciate it immensely.

Helen had been working really, really hard. She was exhausted. She had tonsillitis and she woke up with a swollen neck. She had an infection in her neck. She needed surgery and she was in intensive care on a breathing tube, being monitored to make sure her blood wasn't poisoned. Trooper, she podcasted from her hospital bed. And she now has an awesome scar and a good story.

I mean, if you have to get stuck anywhere, may I recommend Tasmania. It's really beautiful. Food's amazing. The people are very sweet. And there's some magnificent wildlife. Good to know. I'll schedule the surgery.

Vineyards and cheeses. You don't have to have the surgery. You can just go. But Tyler Q does apologize. Thank you, Tyler. It's not your fault. He does ask why are a lot of science-based words like species names said in Latin?

Yeah, that's a really good question. Partly, I think because it's kind of an international language. So scientists might not all speak English or French or German or whoever discovered a thing, but they might have all tapped into Latin. I think the other thing is that Latin still has a lot of status, even though the Roman Empire kind of collapsed sort of 1600-ish years ago.

So people associate it with study, intelligence. It was propagated by religion, like by Christianity being performed in Latin and by kind of high-level politics and stuff like that. That has helped propagate Latin for hundreds of years after the Roman Empire fell apart. For more on that, please enjoy the classical archaeology episode on Ancient Rome.

Yeah, but it still has this reputation of things being classier and more intelligent. And that is a really good con to pull. It's a long con. It's a long con. And it's still happening. People are still coining new Latin words. There's a radio station in Finland

I made an episode about that has done a news broadcast in Latin every week since 1989. And obviously, words like airplane have no Latin equivalents. They have to make those up and computer. But I interviewed a guy who coins words for that, and he said, well, it's no different really to how computer didn't exist in English, and then it had to be invented

when people started having computers or internet. So actually it's fine. Props to Teomo Pecanen, a Finnish Latin professor. And for more on this, you can see the illusionist episode number five, titled Latin Lives. Okay. Yeah, showed me.

I mean, I remember learning Latin. We just learned so many words for kill. You could kill by bludgeoning. Yeah, there were so many. Like, but of course it was useful. Yeah, I mean, in those times. Yeah, it's really indicative of what they were interested in. Yes.

Yeah, we didn't learn anything that interesting. How disappointing. Oh, it was a very, I just remember being like, this is quite gory. Yeah. Just another word for kill? Yeah. Just slightly different ways.

So many inventive ways to destroy a person. What do you hate the most about your job? I hate myself and having to spend this amount of time with my talking and my thoughts, and how limited I feel in my mental capacity. So there's that. Also, sometimes it's quite lonely because you're on your own a lot producing stuff.

So that and I hate the technological side, but I have to do it. I do find it boring and often frustrating. And often it's three in the morning and I just really need to get an episode out and something's going wrong and I don't understand why. Do you work several weeks ahead? Are you finishing an episode?

Yeah, because I finished an episode an hour before. Gosh, yeah, like no minutes. Yeah. Oh, God, that makes me feel so much better. I think it's weird when people are way ahead. What if something changes? What if something comes up? Do you think, well, now's the time to do that?

Right. Okay, that makes me feel so much better. I figured because you are so successful that you just have them like lined up and they just come right up. No, I'm just the most tragically disorganized person. And it's got worse as well. Like I was always bad at planning ahead.

And now since I got ill actually last year, I lost a lot of time that I would usually use, at least banking some interviews to get ahead on the podcast. But also, I think what's happening in the back of my mind is, well, you couldn't plan ahead, but you might get stuck in hospital in Tasmania and never go there.

So you're using it as an excuse? I think subconsciously I am. That's fine. Yeah. Just to be absolutely terrible at forward planning. That's great. We all do that. It's ridiculous.

I need to get my shit together. What is your favorite thing about your job or about word origins? Oh, learning is great. That's a real privilege in a job. The people I've met through podcasting, that is delightful. And getting to spend time in listeners' brains,

that's amazing. Yeah. Creepy. I've just made it sound creepy. Yeah, I guess. Goodbye, your internal monologue. I'm here now. Do you have a favorite thing about word origins?

Do I? Do I? Favorite thing. I like when someone has a rigid idea about how things should be, and there's just so many examples in history of why they're not like that. That's useful to me.

Disproving people. See if I can just transform society through the medium of light entertainment that's about words. I would say that you already are, and thank you for doing that. No, you're so welcome. Thank you for doing this.

Thank you for sharing so many words with me. It is so nice to be here. Thanks for having me. Yay, etymology. Yeah, etymology and entomology. And entomology, yes. Thanks for not being bugged by it. Hey.

I know you hate puns sometimes. So Helen Zaltzman, how much do you adore her? The answer is a lot. So keep asking smart people stupid questions, even if you have an internet crush on them and they are in your apartment politely having to stare up at a wall of dead cicadas.

Now, for more of Helen's wit and word wisdom, go just immediately subscribe to The Illusionist. She is Helen Zaltzman on Twitter and Instagram, and Illusionist Show on Twitter. More links are in the show notes. We are at oligies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Allie Ward with 1L on both. And for pins and hats and totes and shirts,

go to oligiesmerch.com. Thank you, Bonnie Dutch and Shannon Feltis for managing that. Thank you, Erin Talbert and Hannah Lippo for admitting the wonderful oligies Facebook group. Thank you, interns Harry Kim and Kayla Patton. Jared Sleeper of Mind Jam Media for assistant editing and some research this week. And of course, Steven Ray Morris of The Purcast

and See Jurassic Right for stitching all these elements together. Now, at the end of each week, I tell you a secret, this week's secret. I've been going down a little bit of an Instagram hole watching videos of bot fly removal. Oh boy. There's this fly lays an egg in your skin and then there's like a worm the size of a baby carrot in there.

And they just pull it out wriggling. And at first you just see the head and then this thing comes out. Oh boy. Rather pear shaped. It gets bigger and bigger toward the end and then it just pops out. Oh man.

That's enough for this secret. Bye bye. I save Latin. What did you ever do?