Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Is It Theater or Theatre?

Episode Date: January 6, 2021

Have you ever noticed sometimes theaters – we mean, theatres – oh, forget it – places where you see movies or plays – are sometimes spelled two different ways? You can thank Noah Webster, author of the first American dictionary, for that. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck, and this is short stuff.

And the one where we get into explaining why some places you go to see a movie or a play are spelled theater, T-H-E-A-T-R-E, and others are spelled theater, T-H-E-A-T-E-R. And it has nothing to do with one being futuristic or anything like that. And I love this because like when we go on live tour, Chuck, it's almost invariably theater, but every once while you run up against a place, a venue that spells it theater with the E-R instead of R-E. And it's mind-boggling. It's probably the worst thing that happens on tours is having to deal with the differentiation between those two. Yeah, it's funny. I had a feeling you were going to mention that because when we do our tour website there through our old pales and square space,

I always have to go back and double check and you're right. It usually is R-E, it seems like. And I like the way that looks on paper and on a billboard. Yeah, it looks very regal. It reminds you of rich, deep red velvet curtains and things like that. It's like an evening with Josh and Chuck, not just Josh and Chuck live. Yeah, it comes to Josh and Chuck if you want, who cares. You know, that's the E-R version. The R-E version is like you said, an evening with Josh and Chuck. That's right. So this all came about from one man and his name was Noah Webster. And at first I was thinking, wait a minute, did Mel Gibson play him in a movie? But I looked it up and that was the guy who was writing the Oxford English Dictionary. Oh, really?

Not Noah Webster who wrote Webster's Dictionary. What book was that or movie? Was that The Man with Two Faces? No, it was the Professor and the Mad Man, I think. I have never heard of that. Oh, okay. So I've heard the story before that there was a dictionary out there. I thought it was the American English Dictionary, not the Oxford one. Like there was a guy who was in an asylum for decades and contributed significantly to that dictionary, right? That's the one. Yeah, I haven't seen it, but I've heard good things. I didn't know Mel Gibson was in it. Yeah, the famous anti-Semite. Right. So we're talking instead about the other dictionary, not the Oxford English Dictionary, the American English Dictionary created by Noah Webster,

who turns out to have been a bit of a polymath back in the 18th century. Cool dude from what I understand. Yeah, he seems like quite the Renaissance man. He was born in Connecticut in 1758. And after the Revolutionary War started in 1775, he was in college at Yale. War ends. He's in a militia, like a patriot militia, graduates and then becomes a teacher and then an attorney and then started to say, your articles of Confederation are garbage and the way they're laid out and it would be much better if you did these things. Yeah, I couldn't find what he was credited with as far as that goes, although I did see some free speech stuff. He may have been a big advocate of free speech.

Well, he was a member of an anti-slavery society. He was a founder of the Connecticut Society for the Abolition of Slavery. Yeah, so that tracks. And he also helped found Amherst College in Massachusetts, but he's known as a dictionary guy. Yeah, and he had this whole thing where he felt like America needed to come into its own intellectually or celebrate its culture more intellectually. And that a good way to do that was to kind of separate itself education-wise from the old British system and the old British books and use brand new, beautiful American books. And there weren't any at the time. So he said about creating one himself. He found out like actually little American

school kids are learning from the old British books and he was very upset about that. So he said, you know what? I'm going to create something different. Yeah, and pre-dictionary, which we'll get to after the break, he wrote something called the American Spelling Book, which was also referred to as the blue-backed speller. I guess it added a blue cover on the back. Is the only thing I can think of? Or it was referring to a character who had a blue back in the book. Maybe so, but it was a big success. It sold about a hundred million copies by 1883, which is just astounding. And we know now because we have a book that has not sold a hundred million copies. No, no, Chuck, it was a hundred million copies by 1883. So in a hundred years.

That's really astounding. And it's still in print today. Yeah. But it helps standardize American English for teachers. And then he thought, this is great, but what I really want to do is write a dictionary. And we're going to take a little break and tell you about that result right after this. I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Kids relationships life in general can get messy.

You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Okay, so Noah Webster is riding high on his bluebacked speller in the success of it. And he's, he's done something he wanted to do, which was help de-Britishize American school kids learning. That was a good, good first start. But then he said, you know, yes, I believe the children in our future teach them well and let them lead the way, et cetera. But I also think that we need to get to the adults as well. We

need to just basically create a tome, a text that is the definitive guide to American English, because everybody's running around here saying things a little differently, but we're still spelling them the British way. And that has to end, say, I know a Webster. That's right. And it ended up being that 70,000 word dictionary of the American dictionary, I'm sorry, and American dictionary of the English language is the full title. And he said, you know, the word color, it doesn't need that you. You don't hear it. It's useless. We're wasting ink. Drop it. Plow, you want to plow a field? Just go out and PLOW that field. Don't PLOUGH that field, because that's a waste of time.

Right. What you want to do is go hit it with the W, the PLOW. And I'm very grateful to him that we, we have words like draft spelled with an F rather than a UGH or, you know, PLOW spelled the right way. And color without a UGH or honor without a UGH, it all makes sense. And I guess it had to do with, like I said, the way that people were pronouncing words in America. We're still saying the same word, but we were, we were saying it slightly differently. So it made sense to kind of alter the spelling. Some words he went after though did not stick though, did they, Chuck? Yeah. It looks so funny on paper. I wish they would have stuck, because he proposed spelling tongue

T-U-N-G, which for some reason just looks infinitely dirtier. It looks sexual for some reason to me. And women, W-O-M-E-N, he proposed should be spelled W-I-M-N, I'm sorry, W-I-M-M-E-N, women. Yeah. Which sounds derogatory almost, like tongue sounds dirty and women sounds like who cares kind of spelling, you know what I'm saying? So I'm glad that those two stayed the same. Yeah. And it just looks very strange. Of course, had they made those changes, we would look at tongue T-O-N-G-U-E and think that looks very like draft D-R-A-U-G-H-T. We would think that looks weird because it's just what you know growing up. But theater is what we're here to talk about. And theater was one of those,

I think pre-Webster, it was always R-E. Isn't that right? Yes. There was no other way to spell theater except T-H-E-A-T-R-E until Webster came along and said nuts to that. Yeah. Swap them out. But this is an example of one that kind of half took. There is no correct way. You can use either one. There is a notion within the world of theater that if you're talking about the world of theater, you'd say R, you spell it with an R-E, but you actually perform at a theater with an E-R. And I think I kind of knew that, but that's not even, you know, the hard and fast rule. Which I mean, that makes sense to me, but I don't think Chuck I've ever encountered anybody who

actually, like any normal person, like just walking around that believe that or that held that viewpoint, have you? No. I mean, I think I've heard that, like I said, theater with an R-E might refer to the industry of putting on plays and shows, but I've never seen anyone write, you know, in the theater, we perform at a theater and then spell that two different ways. Yeah. I just, I've never encountered it before, but it does make sense. And apparently, some people do kind of see the world like that, but for the rest of us, we're just going to stay muddled and confused till the end of time, swapping out R-E and E-R for theater. Because in the end, it doesn't really matter. Whoever you're talking to is going to know what you're

talking about. And if you're a prescriptivist, no, a descriptivist, that's language. That's what counts. That's right. And I think the end result is hopefully sometime next fall and winter, you might be able to see, spend an evening with Josh and Chuck at a theater. Right. Or if you're just kind of feeling super American at a theater, okay? Well, since we said theater two different ways, I think everybody, it's clear that this is the end of short stuff. And short stuff says adios. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio App.

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