0:05

Grammar Girl's here, I'm in Jan Fogarty,

0:07

and you can think of me is your friendly guide

0:10

to the English language. We talk

0:12

about writing, history, Girl's,

0:15

and other cool stuff. Today,

0:17

we'll talk about the difference between the words

0:19

through and and

0:21

then we'll talk about why you should avoid

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Honeyfuggler

0:29

English can seem like a muddled, confused,

0:32

and downright chaotic language.

0:34

One popular meme to express and

0:36

demonstrate this involves the sentence.

0:39

English is a difficult language to learn.

0:41

It can be understood, through

0:44

tough, thorough thought though. Although,

0:47

see what I did there. This sentence

0:49

is an extreme example of the way

0:51

English has words and spellings just

0:54

don't seem to make much sense. It's

0:56

not exactly a sentence that rolls

0:58

off the tongue and isn't likely to

1:00

actually show up in the real world.

1:03

What does happen more often though is

1:05

confusion especially when writing

1:07

between the words through and throughout.

1:10

In fact, a listener named Jordan asked about

1:13

the difference a few months ago. At

1:15

first glance, these two words seem

1:17

like they might almost be interchangeable,

1:21

so it can be tricky to know which one to

1:23

use in any given instance. Like

1:26

in so many cases in English, I

1:28

mean, the memes aren't entirely wrong

1:30

after all. Coming up with

1:32

rules is dangerous territory

1:34

because there are always exceptions But

1:37

if you want a handy guideline to remember

1:40

when to use through, try

1:42

dropping the h. You end up with

1:44

trough. Right? Now,

1:46

this might sound like I'm still just riffing

1:48

on the meme from before, but

1:50

hear me out. A trough's

1:53

primary characteristic is that

1:55

it's long and usually straight.

1:58

We primarily use

1:59

the word through when we're talking

2:02

about either a physical or

2:04

metaphorical straight line.

2:07

There's a sense of direction with

2:09

through, just like with a trough. If

2:12

you're driving through a forest,

2:14

you may not necessarily be going in a

2:16

straight line all the time, but

2:18

in a big picture sense, you're

2:20

going from point a to point

2:22

b, and the forest is part of

2:24

that journey. Now

2:26

maybe a clearer example is when

2:28

you think of punching a hole, through a

2:30

wall or a piece of paper.

2:33

It's localized and precise.

2:36

You instinctively know that the wall

2:38

or a piece of paper is still mostly in hacked.

2:40

So you haven't damaged or destroyed

2:43

all of it. But something,

2:45

a drill or a pencil example,

2:48

has gone from point a to point

2:50

b regardless of what was in

2:52

the way. We also use

2:54

through when talking about time. you

2:56

might talk about something a favorite

2:58

podcast maybe, helping you

3:01

get through some tough times.

3:04

When we give a range of dates, say for

3:06

describing a vacation, we'll often

3:08

say something like from the first

3:10

through eighth of December. In

3:13

these cases, we're using a metaphorical direction,

3:17

a timeline, you might say.

3:19

But we're still talking essentially about

3:21

traveling in a direction and going from

3:23

point a to point b

3:25

passing through something along

3:27

the way. 'Throughout', on

3:30

the other hand, has a slightly different

3:32

connotation. There's a more

3:35

all encompassing bigger sense

3:37

to it. If you set off a

3:39

large firework, it travels through

3:42

the space, low to the ground, just

3:44

above where it shot off. But

3:46

throughout the space, where it explodes

3:49

in every direction,

3:51

Usually, we don't use throughout

3:53

when we're talking about anything linear,

3:55

but rather when we're talking about a physical

3:58

or metaphorical area,

4:00

The new red sock in the washing machine

4:02

might spread its color throughout the

4:05

load of laundry, or if

4:07

the newly relocated animals might

4:09

repopulate and spread throughout

4:12

the forest.

4:13

To continue our spelling

4:15

related memory tricks, If we

4:18

started with through and instead of

4:20

adding out to the end, we

4:22

just stuck an extra o near the start of the

4:24

word, we get thorough.

4:26

And if something is, for instance, thoroughly

4:29

mixed, it's been spread throughout

4:32

the mixture. Further,

4:34

it may have occurred to you earlier

4:36

that you can somewhat change the

4:38

meaning of the word through by adding

4:40

the word all before it.

4:42

And that's right. And when you do that,

4:45

it's essentially a replacement for

4:47

throughout. You could say the

4:49

red socks spread its color all

4:51

through the laundry or throughout

4:53

the laundry.

4:54

You could say the animals spread all

4:56

through the forest or throughout

4:59

the forest. Hopefully,

5:00

this helps a little bit when you're trying to

5:02

remember whether to use through or And

5:05

if you listened through the whole

5:07

thing, you found handy tips

5:09

throughout.

5:11

That segment was written by Ryan Paulson,

5:14

who's an Avid Word Nerd, and the co

5:16

host of the etymology podcast,

5:18

Lexitexture. If

5:23

you're spending time with loved ones for the

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holidays, chances are you're gonna hear a

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lot of stories. the ones

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a few too many times. But have

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you ever wanted to help your loved ones

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document these stories? Well,

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story worth makes it fun and

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easy to basically write a book of life

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memories. Every week,

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related question that you pick

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from their collection. Like, what's the bravest

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thing you've ever done? All

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And then after a year, story worth compiles

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everything into a beautiful hardcover

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is really simple.

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Get started with your loved one for the holidays,

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and before you know it, you'll both be

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cherishing those timeless stories for generations

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to come. My dad has been

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doing the story with questions, and it's also led

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us to have lots of interesting conversations.

6:14

The prompt questions are great.

6:16

And I'm actually hoping you

6:19

can help me make his day here.

6:21

So last week, we were talking about

6:23

his favorite books as a child.

6:26

He says, starting at about age eight or

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nine, he started reading all the adult

6:30

science fiction books he could find at his

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local library. And when I

6:34

asked him what his favorite one was, he

6:36

could describe it, but he couldn't remember

6:38

the title. So this would

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have been around nineteen fifty five.

6:42

and all he could remember about how the book

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looked was that it looked worn. So it

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probably had been out for at least a

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few years by then. He

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says it was just like Star Trek.

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Like, when he saw Star Trek years later,

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his first thought was it's just like that book.

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He said it was about three hundred pages

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long and was about a crew on a spaceship

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that was out in the galaxy seeking

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new life and new civilizations. He

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said each chapter was about twenty

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to thirty pages long and described

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the cruise encounter with a new species

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or civilization, a new one for every

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chapter. It would absolutely

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make his day if we could identify that book for

7:19

him. So if it rings a bell, if you know

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that book, please let me know Take

7:23

me on social media or call the voice mail

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line in the show notes. And thanks to StoryWare

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for providing all the great prompt questions

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that have led me to have these great conversations

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with my dad It'll be really

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fabulous to have them all immortalized in

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grammar. Where

8:00

there's some will searches for the surprising

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places Shakespeare shows up outside

8:05

the theater. Host, Barry Evelstein,

8:07

artistic director of one of the country's leading

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Shakespeare Theatres asks

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what it is about Shakespeare that's

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given him a continuous afterlife

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in all sorts of unexpected ways.

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You'll hear Shakespeare doing rehabilitative

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work at a maximum security prison,

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helping kids on the autism spectrum

8:25

to communicate, shaping religious

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observances, appearing in

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the mouths of US presidents, and

8:33

even being at the center of a deadly

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riot in New York City.

8:37

Join Berry as he uncovers the way the

8:39

Shakespeare endures in our modern

8:41

society and what that says

8:43

about us. Listen

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to where there's a will, finding

8:47

Shakespeare,

8:47

wherever you get

8:50

your podcasts.

8:51

In

8:55

nineteen twelve, William Howard

8:58

Taft, not a man known for

9:00

eloquence. sent journalists to

9:02

the dictionary when he used the word

9:04

Honeyfuggler. Honey What's

9:07

may be thinking? Well, it turns out

9:09

that Honeyfuggler is an old

9:11

American term for someone who deceives

9:13

other folks by flattering them.

9:16

It can be spelled with one g or two and sometimes

9:18

with an o replacing the

9:20

u. Two Honeyfuggler

9:23

sweet talk. but also to

9:25

bamboozle, bum fuzzle, or

9:26

a hornswoggle.

9:28

The word has some twists and turns in

9:30

its history. According to both the

9:32

Oxford English Dictionary and the

9:34

Dictionary of American Regional English,

9:36

it was first recorded as it

9:38

can tuckey term in eighteen twenty nine

9:40

with the definition to quiz or

9:42

to cosin, both of which at the

9:44

time meant to dupe. The

9:48

earliest example in the newspapers dot

9:50

com database is from an eighteen

9:52

forty one story in a Tennessee

9:54

newspaper, The Rutherford Telegraph,

9:56

in which an editor used the term to mean

9:59

insincere flattery.

9:59

He

10:00

said of the speaker of the Tennessee

10:03

State Senate that some may

10:05

say it's impolitic of me to

10:07

talk this plainly about mister

10:09

attorney and think it better to

10:11

Honeyfuggler and plaster over with

10:13

soft, soap to protect a

10:15

senator. An eighteen

10:18

forty eight report from the New Orleans Picayun

10:20

refers to swindlers as Honeyfuggler.

10:23

An example from the Mississippi free trader

10:26

in eighteen forty nine talks about

10:28

political trickery intended

10:30

to honeyfuggle one party

10:32

and exterminate the other.

10:34

And another southern paper that year

10:36

reported on a speech of general Sam

10:38

Houston who attempted to

10:40

honeyfuggle the good hearers and get

10:42

up a general hurrah of

10:44

old Sam. The trim

10:46

remained in use in the second half of the

10:48

nineteenth century with a couple of hundred

10:50

examples in newspapers around the

10:52

country. It was used

10:54

occasionally as a noun and

10:56

sometimes had the variants Honeyfuggler

10:59

or a Honeyfuggler. And it

11:01

could also mean snuggle up

11:03

to or publicly display

11:05

affection. Honeyfuggler

11:07

remained a marginal term, often

11:09

characterized as slang or as a

11:11

regionalism, but it popped

11:13

into the national consciousness when

11:15

taft deployed it to characterize his

11:17

predecessor and then rival for the

11:19

nineteen twelve Republican presidential

11:21

nomination. In

11:23

a speech in Cambridge, Ohio, Taft

11:26

said, I honed that the

11:28

man is a demagogue and a

11:30

flatterer who comes out and tells the people that they

11:32

know it all. I hate

11:34

a flatter. I like a man to

11:36

tell the truth straight out.

11:38

and I hate to see a man try to honeyfuggle

11:41

the people by telling them

11:43

something he doesn't believe.

11:44

Teddy

11:46

Roosevelt had plenty to say about

11:48

his former protege taft as well,

11:50

calling him a fat head, a

11:52

puzzle wit, and a flubbed

11:54

dog, Woodrow Wilson won

11:56

the presidency that year, and

11:58

tasked speech popularized HoneyFugel

12:00

for a time. And in

12:02

nineteen fifteen, the Los Angeles Express

12:05

even reported on a socialite

12:07

named miss Queenie Alvarez

12:10

who concocted a soft drink known as

12:12

the Honeyfuggler made with sweet

12:14

fruit juices. Honey

12:16

Fugel still never quite caught

12:18

on as a drink or as a mainstream

12:20

English expression, perhaps because

12:22

of the near homophony with

12:24

a different f word. but

12:26

it made a brief reappearance in

12:29

presidential news in nineteen thirty

12:31

904. When the Syracuse Herald

12:33

referred to another president Roosevelt

12:36

as the prize honeyfugler of

12:38

his time. And in

12:40

nineteen forty six, the word appeared in

12:42

the title of a novel by author,

12:44

Virginia Dyer. honey

12:46

foggling time. A reviewer

12:48

explained that the book takes its

12:50

title from a colloquialism popular

12:52

in the middle west of the eighteen

12:55

eighties. Referring to

12:57

dishonest intentions concealed

12:59

by honeydew words and

13:01

promises. So

13:03

where does come from?

13:06

Well, one theory found in

13:08

Bartlett's eighteen forty eight dictionary

13:10

of americanisms that it's

13:12

a variation of a British dialect

13:14

word, Kony Fough goal, which

13:16

meant to hoodwink or Kajol

13:18

by flattery. Coney

13:20

is an old word for an adult rabbit

13:23

and was sometimes used to indicate

13:25

a person who gullible. Fungal

13:28

according to the Oxford English Dictionary is

13:30

an older dialect term meaning

13:32

to trick or deceive. so

13:35

to or Kony

13:37

Fuggle meant to cheat a mark.

13:40

Today, the OED reports that Honey

13:42

Fuggle is now somewhat dated.

13:44

Well, maybe we should try to revive

13:46

it. That

13:48

segment was written by Edwin Elbatestella

13:50

who teaches linguistics in

13:52

writing at Southern Oregon University

13:54

in Ashland where he's served as

13:56

a Dean and

13:57

Interim provost.

13:58

His books

13:59

include Bad Language, are some

14:02

words better than others, and

14:04

sorry about that, the language of

14:06

public apology. It

14:08

originally appeared on the OUP

14:10

blog and appears here with permission.

14:15

Finally, I have a family

14:17

like story. Hey,

14:19

Minyeon. So today, I would like to share a

14:21

fan like, which is really a word

14:23

a friend client, but it's

14:26

still amazing, so I still use it and love it.

14:28

I had been living in France for

14:30

a year. I had changed countries

14:33

And for me, you know, that Haimara arrived was quite important,

14:35

so I told my friend, after you have lived

14:37

in there, hey, today is my birthday,

14:39

which in in French,

14:41

it really, they use the word for

14:44

right, to say French, to say

14:46

birthday. And and

14:48

he was like, oh, really, your your

14:50

your birthday. Well, not really. My birthday

14:53

is really a year since I came here,

14:55

so my French arriving

15:00

last day, and he was like, he

15:02

very spontaneously makes the

15:04

word arrive with anniversary, French

15:06

for birthday, and he came up with the

15:08

word, think that's there.

15:11

And I thought this was amazing.

15:13

So on the fifth of December

15:15

next week, actually, I've used

15:17

it every year. I celebrate my anniversary.

15:20

The same way I celebrate my birthday and

15:22

all of the friends know where they What's. So I

15:24

just wanna share it with

15:26

You thought might be

15:28

interesting. So I love

15:29

your podcast. Bye.

15:31

Thank

15:32

you so much. for sharing your story.

15:34

I loved it, and I hope you have a wonderful

15:36

this week. Grammar

15:39

Girl is a quick and dirty tips

15:41

podcast. Thanks to my audio engineer,

15:43

Nathan Sims, and my editor, Adam

15:45

CECL. Our ad operation

15:47

specialist is Morgan Christiansen, Our

15:50

marketing and publicity assistant is

15:52

Divina Tomlin, and our digital

15:54

operation specialist is

15:56

Holly Hutchings, whose favorite

15:58

dessert is sour cream cheesecake

16:00

with berries. And our

16:02

intern is Cameron Lacey. And

16:04

I'm Mignon Fogarty, better known

16:06

as grammar girl. That's

16:08

all. Thanks for listening.