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Girl here. I'm Mignon Fogarty, your friendly

0:55

guide to the English language. We talk

0:58

about writing, history, rules, and other cool

1:00

stuff. Today's show is almost

1:02

all about funny words. First,

1:04

we'll look at weird names for things

1:06

like Dinkus and Globella. Can you guess

1:08

what those are? And then

1:11

with some help from listeners, I dive

1:13

deep on WimWam for a Muckit. And

1:15

buried in the middle, I have a quick tip about

1:17

when to capitalize Mom and Dad. But

1:20

before we get started, I have a correction

1:22

from last week's piece about the power of

1:24

plural pronouns, such as we and us. At

1:28

one point, we said these

1:30

pronouns are second-person pronouns, which

1:32

of course isn't right. They're

1:34

first-person pronouns. Duh. We

1:37

corrected the audio in that show right away, so

1:39

it's not there anymore. And thanks

1:41

to Grammar Pelusian Saab for quickly

1:43

and kindly pointing out the error.

1:50

Have you ever been delighted to learn a

1:52

quirky name for something like the tittle, the

1:54

dot over the letters i and j, or

1:57

the grollex, the string of symbols that represent

1:59

the presents swearing in comic

2:01

books. Sometimes these

2:03

words sound positively made up,

2:05

which in a way they are. All words were made

2:08

up at some point. But some

2:10

words sound as though they were

2:12

created by Dr. Seuss or Lewis

2:14

Carroll springing forth from a fictitious

2:16

world. Sometimes these

2:18

funny sounding words come from industry

2:20

specific jargon. Many times

2:23

these names have multiple meanings that

2:25

people are more commonly familiar with

2:27

outside the jargon. For

2:29

example, if you chat with a typographer, you

2:32

might hear words that describe different parts

2:34

of letters. And to many, a

2:36

teenage snickering, crutch, refers

2:39

to the inside angle where two

2:41

strokes meet, such as in the

2:43

capital letter N. A

2:45

dinkus, much to the dismay of said

2:47

teenagers, does not refer to a person being

2:49

a dork, but instead is

2:52

the three asterisks in a

2:54

horizontal line typically found

2:56

in novels or on web copy

2:58

to show a natural break. And

3:01

gadzooks, there's also the gadzooks

3:03

in the typography world. A

3:05

gadzook is an embellishment or a

3:07

fancy line that's originally

3:09

not part of either letter,

3:11

but connects them together. For

3:14

example, depending on the typeface or

3:16

font, you'll occasionally see an embellishment

3:19

between two Ls at the top

3:21

that connects the two letters. That

3:24

is a gadzook. Another

3:26

way to think about a gadzook is the

3:28

etymology of the word, which dates back to

3:30

medieval times. Essentially,

3:33

a gadzook is a portmanteau

3:35

of God's hooks, referring to

3:37

the nails by which Christ was fastened

3:39

to the cross. Specifically,

3:41

gadzook breaks down to God

3:44

for God and zooks for

3:46

hooks, according to Edimon line. So

3:49

you can imagine the gadzook of a letter

3:51

as a hook, holding the two

3:53

characters together. This

3:55

is where it's easy to get lost in a rabbit

3:57

hole. And e-gad, this is where the gadzook breaks down.

3:59

This was a rather deep rabbit hole,

4:02

leading through the words related to Gadzook.

4:05

There's Gadz bobs and Gadz

4:07

lids, Gadz bullikens, Gadz swoons

4:10

and Gadz nouns, all

4:12

of which are mild oaths, with the

4:14

part after Gadz presumably being simply fun

4:17

things to say. And as

4:19

you may have guessed, e-Gad refers to

4:21

God as a softened oath of exclamation

4:23

too. It's easy

4:25

to get lost in the world of words

4:27

to the point that your glabella furrows, the

4:29

tiny bit of your face between your

4:32

eyebrows, deep in thought and

4:34

time disappears, leading to a whamble

4:36

from your stomach. Go

4:38

sit outside and enjoy the petrichor, the

4:40

smell after a first rain, and eat

4:43

some food to settle the whambling. Just

4:45

avoid chanking your food, chewing loudly,

4:48

lest you annoy those around you.

4:51

With your food, grab a cold

4:53

beer, but leave the barm behind,

4:55

which forms on top of fermenting

4:57

beer. Preferring wine? Grab

4:59

that wine bottle instead. Examining

5:02

the bottle, you allow your stream of

5:04

conscience to wander, and you wonder if

5:06

there's a name for the bottom of

5:09

the bottle or the glass indents up

5:11

inside. And of course there is. It's

5:14

a punt, but not like punting

5:16

a football. The punt of

5:18

a wine bottle has an interesting history.

5:21

Although the origins aren't certain, it

5:23

appears the name derives from how

5:25

the bottles were originally hand-blown. According

5:27

to Wine Spectator, in order to

5:29

have the bottle stand upright, the

5:32

seam was pushed up by an

5:34

iron rod called a punto, which

5:36

created additional structural integrity to the

5:39

bottle. Thus, the indent in the

5:41

bottle was named the punt. The

5:44

punto is commonly referred to as

5:46

the puntie in English, derived from

5:48

the French puntile, a diminutive form

5:50

from the Latin poltum, meaning

5:52

a point. Looking into

5:54

the names of objects creates a fun pastime

5:57

that's easy to get lost in. When funny

6:00

sounding word leads to another creatively made

6:02

up word, and many spawn from an

6:04

interesting history. Spending

6:06

time with these odd sounding words

6:08

can drag your thoughts down a

6:10

rather deep rabbit hole that can

6:12

feel like a splendid, fictitious world

6:14

where Dr. Seuss or Lewis Carroll

6:16

would spend their time. That

6:20

segment was written by Michaela Dunn, a

6:22

Wyoming-based editor and publisher for Every When

6:25

Press. She specializes in

6:27

magical realism, low fantasy, folklore,

6:29

and fairy tales. There

6:35

are over 75 million monthly Tubi viewers.

6:38

That's more people than there are influencers

6:41

on the internet. Which

6:43

means Tubi is more popular than

6:45

sponsored posts for digestive enzymes and

6:48

high coverage foundation. More

6:50

popular than soft launching your boyfriend.

6:54

More popular than making boomers explode with rage

6:56

when you tell them how much you make

6:58

on a single post. Tubi

7:01

is more popular than influencers.

7:04

See you in there. I

7:06

was hours into a hunt for new digs at

7:08

the local shopping mall and losing steam fast when

7:11

fate intervened. Drumstick, get your drumstick! Naughty sweet drumstick?

7:13

What luck! One drumstick please! Here you go. Go

7:15

get this part! Made of chicken! I want an

7:17

ice cold crumb. I want a nice cold crumb.

7:19

I want a nice cold crumb. I want a

7:21

nice cold crumb. I want an ice

7:23

cold creamy crunchy drumstick sundae cone. You

7:26

and me both buddy. Well that's a

7:28

vendor next door. But

7:30

that line is three miles long! Oh

7:33

well. Another day, another

7:35

drumstick. Remember

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8:56

Next, with Mother's Day in the US having

8:59

just passed, I'm going to answer a quick

9:01

related listener question. Hi, yes,

9:04

I wanted to know when

9:06

do you capitalize mother

9:08

and father? Not

9:11

when it started the sentence,

9:13

but within a sentence. Thanks. This

9:16

comes up a lot because it's actually a little

9:18

tricky. The way to think

9:20

about it is to ask whether you're

9:22

using mother as a name or a

9:24

descriptor. For example, in some families,

9:26

people refer to the matriarch as mother as

9:29

though it's her name. Mother is going

9:31

to pick you up after practice or don't

9:34

forget to get a card for mother. You

9:37

could substitute a name in those

9:39

sentences. Jennifer is going to

9:41

pick you up after practice or

9:43

don't forget to get a card

9:45

for Maria. Since you're using mother

9:47

as a name, you capitalize it in

9:50

sentences like that. But when

9:52

you're using it as just a descriptor,

9:54

you don't capitalize it. And a big

9:56

clue that it's descriptive is if it

9:59

has a word like your or my

10:01

in front of it. Your

10:03

mother is going to pick you up after practice. I

10:06

just got a card for my mother. In

10:10

both those cases, mother would be lower case.

10:13

And of course the same rules apply

10:15

to other titles that can also be

10:17

names like dad, auntie, and granny. I

10:19

hope that helps. I

10:25

also have a quick story about text

10:27

from large language models like chat GPT.

10:29

I'm following AI

10:31

really closely because it affects writers,

10:34

editors, and teachers. And

10:36

this week I saw an especially

10:38

interesting report from Scientific American saying

10:41

researchers have found that AI-generated

10:43

text uses certain words

10:46

more often than humans. Words

10:49

like meticulous, innovative,

10:51

intricate, commendable, strategically,

10:54

impressively, and the phrase

10:56

complex and multifaceted. It's

10:59

in Scientific American because they also found

11:01

that these words are showing up more

11:03

than would be expected in

11:05

scientific papers lately, which

11:07

suggests some researchers are using AI

11:09

to help write their papers. So

11:12

if you think you can recognize AI-generated

11:15

text but you aren't sure why, one

11:18

reason could be the preponderance of

11:20

these words that I like to

11:22

call enthusiastic adjectives and adverbs. Finally,

11:29

before we get to the familect

11:31

today, I'm happy to report that

11:33

we've at least partially solved the

11:35

mystery from our grammar polysian Sue

11:37

a few episodes ago about why

11:40

her father would say, it's a wing-wing for

11:42

a muck-it when he didn't want to answer

11:44

a question. Two

11:47

fabulous listeners messaged me on

11:49

Instagram to say there's a

11:51

similar old phrase in Australia.

11:53

Amanda from Melbourne who's 66

11:55

says she remembers the phrase,

11:57

it's a whim-wam for a goose's

11:59

breath. bridle from her childhood.

12:02

And Wendy from Bundaberg says her

12:04

grandfather used to say the same

12:06

thing. He'd sometimes call something useless

12:09

or pointless a wing-wong for

12:11

a goose's bridle. She

12:13

did some web searching and found

12:15

it on the Oxford Reference website

12:18

in a dictionary of Australian colloquialisms.

12:20

And there's a Wikipedia page too,

12:23

both of which include another variation that

12:25

says it's a whim-wam for a duck

12:27

to perch on. And I found

12:29

a 1914 book on

12:32

rustic sayings that has a section

12:34

on evasive replies to the inquisitive

12:36

that lists a

12:38

whim-wam for a mustard mill

12:40

and a whim-wam to wind

12:43

the sun up. Also,

12:45

multiple sources say it could be

12:47

a wig-wam instead of a whim-wam.

12:50

The earliest known use of these phrases

12:52

was in 1836. And

12:55

all these different variations, wing-wang,

12:57

whim-wam, and wig-wam, remind

13:00

me of how there are a bunch of

13:02

different ways to say kitty corner, caddy corner,

13:04

caddy corner, and so on. Because

13:07

people hardly ever see them written down. So

13:09

we often end up interpreting them in different

13:12

ways. So

13:14

where on earth did this silly

13:16

phrase come from? Well,

13:19

the Australian National Dictionary Center

13:21

says that as Sue and

13:23

Wendy reported, it was

13:25

indeed used both to

13:27

avoid answering an unwanted question and

13:30

to refer to something absurd or

13:33

preposterous. The dictionary

13:35

center says whim-wam meant an

13:37

ornament or a trinket, but

13:40

disappeared from the language in the

13:42

19th century and survived only in

13:44

this phrase. So that's

13:47

cool. And then I looked up whim-wam

13:49

in the Oxford English Dictionary. A citation

13:52

from a slang dictionary in

13:55

1860 says it's quote, synonymous

13:57

with fiddle faddle and riff-raff.

14:01

And the OED itself

14:03

compares WimWam to FlimFlam,

14:06

JimJam, and TrimTram, which

14:08

are all, quote, similarly applied

14:10

to trivial or frivolous things,

14:13

unquote. And I was

14:15

also delighted to learn that WimWam gave

14:17

rise to the word whimsy and whimsical.

14:20

What whimsical topics we have today. Okay,

14:24

so a WimWam was a trinket

14:26

or an ornament. But why

14:28

for a goose's bridle, a duck to

14:31

perch on, a mucket, and more?

14:34

Well, sources say that the

14:36

earliest incarnation, a goose's bridle,

14:38

is clearly an absurd thing.

14:41

So it's just a funny conclusion

14:43

to an already funny phrase that's

14:45

sometimes used to describe something

14:47

absurd. Ducks

14:50

do perch on things. So that seems like

14:52

a less apt second half to me. But,

14:54

you know, people do what people do, and

14:57

someone likes that choice. As

14:59

for why Sue's father changed it to

15:02

a mucket, well, as we

15:04

said in the previous episode, a mucket

15:06

is a type of mollusk. And

15:08

he grew up on the Chesapeake, which

15:10

does have muckets. So

15:12

maybe he heard the word as a child,

15:14

and it stuck with him as something funny

15:17

that would make a good ending to this

15:19

quirky phrase. With

15:21

so many documented endings, it does

15:23

seem like people enjoyed personalizing the

15:26

saying. Sue was

15:28

delighted to hear this story and excited to

15:30

tell her brother, and says, I

15:32

have the best listeners in the world, and

15:34

I couldn't agree more. You are

15:36

all the best. And this week, Amanda

15:38

and Wendy are cream of the crop. Thank

15:42

you so much for taking the time

15:44

to share your memories about a WimWam

15:46

for a goose's bridle, because this is

15:48

the kind of thing I never could

15:50

have uncovered, no matter how long I

15:52

searched. And Wendy suggested

15:54

that this phrase is so wonderful that it

15:57

needs to be back in style. So to

15:59

honor Wendy's amazing and Sue's contributions, I

16:01

hope you will all look for opportunities

16:03

to use whim-wam for a muck-it

16:06

or maybe add your own nonsensical, sunny

16:08

ending. Finally,

16:14

I have a familect story. Hi, Grammar

16:17

Girl. This is Denise from Minnesota. I

16:19

have a familect related to your recent

16:21

podcast about how to cite AI. Growing

16:24

up in the 1960s, my brothers and I

16:26

discovered the perfect name for the cardboard tube

16:28

inside of a roll of paper towels. It

16:31

is a duty because that's the most obvious sound

16:33

one makes of it as soon as it's your

16:35

turn to be awarded this great prize.

16:38

I will demonstrate. Do-di,

16:40

do-di, do-di. The

16:43

lucky winner of this boon, much to the

16:45

jealousy of her siblings, would run around the

16:48

house like crazy, shouting this fabulous word until

16:50

the tube was mush and no longer functioned.

16:53

Now that I have a granddaughter, you can bet that I

16:55

have been collecting duties for her to enjoy as soon

16:57

as she learns how to make the sound. Thanks

17:00

for always providing interesting grammar

17:02

goodies. Denise. Thanks

17:04

so much, Denise. This cracked me up

17:06

and of course it's the perfect name

17:08

for that tube. Many thanks. If

17:11

you want to share the story of

17:13

your familect, your family dialect, or word

17:15

your family and only your family uses,

17:18

call the voicemail line at 833-214-GIRL. Keep

17:20

them coming. The number is in the

17:22

show notes and be sure to tell

17:24

me the story behind your familect because

17:26

that's always the best part. And

17:29

if you're a Grammar Palooza subscriber like Sue

17:31

who started the whole Wim Wam story, you

17:33

can also send a voice memo. I send

17:35

text messages with fun facts a couple of

17:38

times a week and it's a great way

17:40

to support the show and the first two weeks

17:42

are free. To sign up

17:44

visit joinsubtext.com/grammar or text hello

17:46

to 917-540-0876. Grammar Girl is

17:48

a quick and dirty tips

17:55

podcast. Thanks to ad operations specialist

17:57

Morgan Christensen, audio engineer Nathan Semes,

18:00

Digital Operations Specialist Holly Hutchings, Marketing

18:02

Assistant Cameron Lacy, Director of Podcasts

18:05

Brandon Goeches, and Marketing Associate Davina

18:07

Tomlin, who just read their 30th

18:09

book this year. Good

18:11

job, Davina. And I'm Mignon

18:13

Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl. Remember

18:16

to look for Grammar Girl Conversations. This

18:19

Thursday, I have an interview with Erin Brenner

18:21

about working as a freelance editor. But

18:24

even if that isn't something that applies

18:26

to you, we're going to talk about

18:28

all kinds of writing productivity tools that

18:30

will truly improve your life. That's

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