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What makes a word a 'word'? · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
0:27
Speaker 1: the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
0:31
Speaker 1: much for tuning in. Let's give a big shout out
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Speaker 1: to our super producer, mister Max Williams.
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Speaker 2: Rama limiting, hibba hit, what is it? Baby bang bang
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Speaker 2: buggy set up chuting, never mind carry.
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Speaker 1: Nailed it, No, we can get it into the o ED.
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Speaker 1: That's mister Noel Brown. None other Uh. They called me
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Speaker 1: ben Bullen in this neck of the woods, and guys
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Speaker 1: they thinking about this. We love words. We actually would
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Speaker 1: not have this show without words.
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Speaker 2: Kind of key. I suppose we could just do it
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Speaker 2: with like wild gesticulations now here in the video age,
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Speaker 2: but don't think it would hit the same and it'd
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Speaker 2: be really hard to consume whilst doing your housework.
1:18
Speaker 1: That's right, because you have to watch us. We are
1:21
Speaker 1: still working on the interpretive dance episodes of Ridiculous History.
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Speaker 2: It's always happening in our hearts.
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Speaker 1: There it is, so you know, thank you words. It's
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Speaker 1: weird nol because language is one of humanity's oldest technologies
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Speaker 1: ever and it is still very much a work in progress.
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Speaker 2: And we love that, you know, on this show and
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Speaker 2: on stuff that I want you to know. This idea
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Speaker 2: of things you might not think are technology as being
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Speaker 2: a form of technology. You know, it is an innovation.
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Speaker 2: The idea of being able to manipulate sounds and phonemes
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Speaker 2: and have shared understanding and logic surrounding ways that we
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Speaker 2: can relate to other people, to have a means to
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Speaker 2: do that, and the medium with which to transmit those
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Speaker 2: ideas is absolutely technology. And I know maybe I'm standing the obvious,
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Speaker 2: but every time that comes up, I'm always like a
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Speaker 2: little like blown away.
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Speaker 1: It's wild, right, And I'm right there with you, man.
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Speaker 1: There is no universal spoken language. In previous episodes, we
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Speaker 1: talked about how there were a couple of folks over
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Speaker 1: Millennia who had tried to prove to themselves that a
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Speaker 1: universal language existed, that if you raised a couple of
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Speaker 1: human kids and you never let them talk to anyone else,
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Speaker 1: they would speak the true language of God.
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Speaker 2: Which is what esperanto.
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Speaker 1: I love an Esperanto reference, man, So.
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Speaker 2: Of the idea of that Speranto being the true language
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Speaker 2: of God.
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Speaker 1: That would be so wild. Check out our pals Josh
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Speaker 1: and Chuck and Jerry. They made an excellent Esperanto episode
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Speaker 1: on their show Stuff. You should know it's weird because
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Speaker 1: to your point, it is baffling to consider language technology.
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Speaker 1: Over thousands of years, over millennia, all sorts of people
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Speaker 1: tried to figure out what makes language tick, how communication works,
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Speaker 1: and again the general hibity hoop love interacting with other humans,
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Speaker 1: not us or perfect at it.
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Speaker 2: And to your point, Ben, in this delightful bit of
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Speaker 2: research here on a long enough timeline, everything's gobbledegook.
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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's just.
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Speaker 2: A matter of what kind of hits and what becomes
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Speaker 2: useful and enough people use and then that becomes part
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Speaker 2: of the you know, lexicon or whatever. And you always
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Speaker 2: say on Stuff, I don't want you to know, and
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Speaker 2: on this show, I'm certain that's you know, the English
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Speaker 2: language or language in general, is a working progress and
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Speaker 2: it is a living you know language that we're always
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Speaker 2: having new words being injected. And I love this idea
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Speaker 2: of other countries too, using words from countries that are
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Speaker 2: not their own and then recontextualizing them and giving them
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Speaker 2: their own unique spin. But ultimately it's a game of
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Speaker 2: telephone that involves the entire world.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and here's a spoiler for a lot of us
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Speaker 1: listening right now. This is a play along Get Home episode.
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Speaker 1: All words at some point were made up, meaning that
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Speaker 1: at some point in ancient history enough people pointed at
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Speaker 1: the sky and said sky, and everybody just went along
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Speaker 1: with that because they, you know, got what you were
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Speaker 1: pointing at.
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Speaker 2: Is it vibes based?
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Speaker 3: Pin?
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Speaker 2: Is it like a lot of words? You know, we
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Speaker 2: have the term automotopia referring to a word that is
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Speaker 2: sounds like the thing that it's describing. You know, sometimes
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Speaker 2: it can be very efective. I guess, so those make
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Speaker 2: sense to me that someone looked at a thing and
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Speaker 2: this saw the sound that it made, and then created
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Speaker 2: the word. But then sky, like, where does that even
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Speaker 2: come from? But who are we to say, I mean,
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Speaker 2: we weren't there?
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and I love that point there, Noel, because again,
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Speaker 1: civilization is still working on, as you said, the vibes.
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Speaker 1: For a few years now, you, Max and I have
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Speaker 1: been wondering about a bit of related ridiculous history. How
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Speaker 1: does a word officially become a quote unquote real word,
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Speaker 1: like the kind of thing you see in a dictionary
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Speaker 1: or encyclopedia. What is to stop us, my old friend,
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Speaker 1: from just saying Grando Boys as a synonym for thousands
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Speaker 1: of US dollars. Do we just insist upon it until
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Speaker 1: everybody plays along?
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Speaker 2: Yeah? I think that's the only way to do it.
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Speaker 1: This is our first meta episode of twenty twenty six.
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Speaker 1: What makes a word a word?
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Speaker 2: Yeah? It is. And before we jump into this, I
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Speaker 2: would love I've been on a bit of a tear,
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Speaker 2: a bit of an obsessive internet rabbit hole lately. Are
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Speaker 2: you familiar with the bizarre patois and slang used by
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Speaker 2: Toronto teens?
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Speaker 1: Ah, you're on the way to Canada.
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Speaker 2: Then well I am, but this is unrelated. I just
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Speaker 2: the Internet started serving me up these videos of these
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Speaker 2: kids in Toronto. Specifically, they sound like they're Jamaican and
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Speaker 2: they use all these crazy words like cheesed and mandam
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Speaker 2: it's is a group of friends or nyse. It was
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Speaker 2: recognized walahi, which is Arabic if I swear to god
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Speaker 2: ting which is very much a you know, Jamaican kind
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Speaker 2: of slang. They're always saying like two two's my word,
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Speaker 2: fam and all of these crazy It's bizarre, dude, Just
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Speaker 2: look it up in your spare time. Anyone out there
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Speaker 2: that isn't a way to type in Toronto oh slang,
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Speaker 2: and you'll see some stuff that will blow your wig back.
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Speaker 1: I can't wait to dive into this. I know I
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Speaker 1: know several of those words, but it'd be weird if
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Speaker 1: I use them, I know.
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Speaker 2: But these kids also, they all like pitch their voices
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Speaker 2: up and sound like the Lucky Charms Leprechaun. It's a
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Speaker 2: whole thing, dude, it's wild.
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Speaker 1: Oh man, that's all okay, okay, I'm not going to
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Speaker 1: say it's awesome.
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Speaker 2: Koto is my word crow skime like it's insane.
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Speaker 1: You give me perfect recommendations every time. Man, I'm excited
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Speaker 1: to dive in. We do have to acknowledge, folks, this
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Speaker 1: is an English centric episode, English language centric episode, and
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Speaker 1: we are talking about getting words into the official English lexicon.
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Speaker 1: If you look at other languages, your mileage may vary.
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Speaker 1: For example, France downright militant about what qualifies as canonical.
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Speaker 2: Friends and like they both like want you to try
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Speaker 2: to speak their language, but also will mock you relentlessly
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Speaker 2: when you do it poorly, oh oh man, or when
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Speaker 2: you do it okay, but you got a weird you
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Speaker 2: got a weird us cadence to you?
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Speaker 1: Oh also no, we have to shout this out. We're
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Speaker 1: pulling a lot of research for this episode from a
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Speaker 1: brain Stuff video I wrote years and years ago, which
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Speaker 1: features none other than the Quist.
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Speaker 2: Our dynomsis the Quist. And do check out those brain
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Speaker 2: Stuff videos. They still are live and well on the internet,
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Speaker 2: and brain Stuff, the podcast, hosted by Lauren Vogelbaum, is
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Speaker 2: still very much an ongoing concern, you know. Hearkening back
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Speaker 2: to the the our roots and the house Stuff works universe.
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Speaker 1: As she would say, that's actual fact, actual facts.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: So no, how would we define a word?
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Speaker 2: H Let's see, Well, Miriam Webster defines like our like
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Speaker 2: like seventh grade project, you know. Presentation research is a
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Speaker 2: word as a speech sound or series of speech sounds
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Speaker 2: that symbolize and communicate a meaning, usually without being divisible
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Speaker 2: into smaller units capable of independent use. That's a that's
9:15
Speaker 2: a noodle baker right there.
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Speaker 1: I don't think that's a middle school way to begin.
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Speaker 2: I do want to Merriam Webster defines, it's the old joke.
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Speaker 2: This is an incredible quote.
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Speaker 1: I do think it is, as you said, a noodle baker.
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Speaker 1: And I like that turn or phrase. We said we
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Speaker 1: were going meta folks, So for what what are they
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Speaker 1: saying here? They're saying take the word wo, r D.
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Speaker 1: You cannot break that down into a sensible series of
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Speaker 1: other words or meaning, Like if you broke it up
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Speaker 1: and was just wo and then rd by themselves, maybe
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Speaker 1: they are abbreviations for something, or they're nonsense entirely.
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Speaker 2: And those are would be the aforementioned phonemes, right, the
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Speaker 2: little nuggets that comprise a word, the sounds that make
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Speaker 2: it up.
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Speaker 1: Just so we can make series of sounds that function
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Speaker 1: by the rules of a specific language, and people who
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Speaker 1: understand that language might almost intuitively understand what you're saying.
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Speaker 1: It's kind of like if you watch a if you
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Speaker 1: speak English and you watch a Scandinavian film or something
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Speaker 1: from the Low Countries or just you know, hang it
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Speaker 1: out in Brussels or something to that effect, you'll hear
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Speaker 1: people speaking and you can almost get what they're saying.
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Speaker 2: Absolutely, Even like the Danish versus German things like that,
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Speaker 2: there's a lot of shared you know, I'm sorry, I'm
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Speaker 2: hearkening back again to my trip to Denmark recently, but
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Speaker 2: I know German relatively wellsh enough to get by, and
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Speaker 2: there's enough shared words or words that are very similar
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Speaker 2: and mean similar things but are spelt slightly different, maybe
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Speaker 2: have a few more ja's in them or whatever. It's
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Speaker 2: really easy to read street signs and the typical things
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Speaker 2: walking around, just kind of using context clues.
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Speaker 1: And history has proven time and time again that there's
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Speaker 1: a reason for that that sort of connectivity. Centuries pass
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Speaker 1: and later language speakers will find a word, they'll put
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Speaker 1: their own spin on it. They'll remix it, not just
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Speaker 1: for pronunciation, but also for the spelling, for the meaning,
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Speaker 1: whatever best suits their environment and their ability to communicate.
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Speaker 1: This is one of our favorite sciences, etymology all about
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Speaker 1: this stuff. It also makes Noel Max and yours truly
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Speaker 1: soups fun at parties.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and it makes us, you know, it just gives
11:47
Speaker 2: us the warm fuzzies something that we enjoy. And this
11:50
Speaker 2: is for it not to be confused with entomology, which
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Speaker 2: is the study of insects. I like the pause there,
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Speaker 2: just you know, on paper, it's like just one one
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Speaker 2: letter away.
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Speaker 1: Right right right, And we have all found ourselves one
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Speaker 1: letter away at some point.
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Speaker 2: Well, one letter away from one word meaning in one
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Speaker 2: language something completely different, potentially mega offensive, and another.
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Speaker 1: And again, I apologize to the good people of the
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Speaker 1: Korean peninsula.
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Speaker 2: You know what you did, and they know, and you're
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Speaker 2: on a list.
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Speaker 3: Everyone knows, and hopefully it's a good list. It's a
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Speaker 3: nice and not notation. And of course all of this
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Speaker 3: applies to phrases as well. There are, you know, certain
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Speaker 3: figures of speech.
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Speaker 2: We went through a thing recently where we were trying
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Speaker 2: to translate some of our podcasts into other languages, and
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Speaker 2: you realize that the job of a good translator is
12:43
Speaker 2: not only just one to one translations. It's how to
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Speaker 2: recommunicate the intent and the meaning of one of these
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Speaker 2: figures of speech that without the cultural context is going
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Speaker 2: to be meaningless. So you have to find like a
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Speaker 2: one to one or something at least adjacent in the
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Speaker 2: other language and culture to make it make any kind
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Speaker 2: of sense.
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Speaker 1: Absolutely, man, this is one of my favorite translators. Once
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Speaker 1: said it's a marriage between accuracy and poetry.
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Speaker 2: Familion. I knew you were going. That makes exact exactly.
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Speaker 2: There's an interpretation to it, and it requires a certain
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Speaker 2: nuance and ability to kind of read between the lines
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Speaker 2: and then really paint a picture, you.
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Speaker 1: Know, yeah, and allow us to be honest folks, we
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Speaker 1: are not really here to analyze the in the weeds
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Speaker 1: socio political mechanisms of communication, or the mechanics I should
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Speaker 1: say English, But we do know the question on everyone's mind.
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Speaker 1: How do I you're saying, make up a word and
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Speaker 1: then make it official.
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Speaker 2: It's a very good question, Ben, one that I'm really
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Speaker 2: hoping that you're going to help us answer in this episode.
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Speaker 2: Otherwise it's going to be a real letdown.
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Speaker 1: Right, Okay, I'll hop on the tight rope with you. Man,
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Speaker 1: we're here together. Uh, let's play along at home, all right,
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Speaker 1: everybody in your head, make up a word? Noel, Max, Ben,
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Speaker 1: you at home, make.
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Speaker 2: Up a word. We also acknowledge that that's pretty difficult
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Speaker 2: thing to do. You could, so I kind of do
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Speaker 2: because if you I mean, my mind immediately jumps to
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Speaker 2: just like nonsense words, and even I have a collection
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Speaker 2: and lexicon of nonsense words already in my head. So
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Speaker 2: I'm having a real hard time without just grunting and
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Speaker 2: making general noises to actually come up with a discrete
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Speaker 2: new word.
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Speaker 1: Let's, uh, Max, what do you got?
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Speaker 2: Bute? Flargle's been done.
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Speaker 1: We know.
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Speaker 2: The universe somewhat some you know.
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Speaker 4: Prove it prove it, No.
14:51
Speaker 2: I will niversery Google.
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Speaker 1: No, we're keeping all of this in.
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Speaker 2: Counter from from the counterfeit cat universe is an anthropomorphic,
15:03
Speaker 2: kind of a little booger looking purple alien creature.
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Speaker 4: That sounds like a proper noun, not an actual word.
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Speaker 2: Bro, you can get a mug Flargl's in the Urban Dictionary. Dude.
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Speaker 4: Okay, now I'm on no side. Maybe it's tough.
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Speaker 2: That's all I'm saying for it to actually be you know,
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Speaker 2: flargyl snorpeledork space attorney.
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Speaker 1: Right.
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Speaker 2: Okay, Uh, everybody remembers flourpol's snorkeledork flargles.
15:29
Speaker 1: Blabberdasherie.
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Speaker 2: See, but you just took haberdashery and and and changed hab.
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Speaker 1: To blab Okay, fair point.
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Speaker 2: I'm not saying it's ave. I just say it again.
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Speaker 2: That's the and I like. I like what you did
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Speaker 2: there because you combine a lot of consonants and vowelly
15:45
Speaker 2: things to make it sounds like English. It does sound
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Speaker 2: like English, But I would argue that that one is
15:50
Speaker 2: probably not going to come up on a precursory Google.
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Speaker 3: You win, no, no craft, we're playing together, least anowledge
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Speaker 3: that it's not.
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Speaker 1: It is very much not easy. I'm with you there,
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Speaker 1: uh And like we're saying, don't be surprised if you
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Speaker 1: run into a flargo moment if the word you made
16:11
Speaker 1: up already exist in some form. And by the way,
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Speaker 1: Max nice one on differentiating between a proper noun and
16:19
Speaker 1: uh uh utility word.
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Speaker 2: Right. Can I also just say in my flargle Google,
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Speaker 2: which is fun to say, I found, like ex Post says,
16:27
Speaker 2: tried making a new word. I call it flargyl.
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Speaker 5: You lose, Max, I was just like trying to try
16:37
Speaker 5: and do like you know, bring my inner Rick and Mortium, Yes.
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Speaker 1: Exactly, And they've got the schlowmies this of course, so
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Speaker 1: uh as you can tell folks, we're we're running into
16:50
Speaker 1: the same difficulties trying to make up a new word
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Speaker 1: that means something and is not also inherently hilarious to us.
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Speaker 1: Communication is arguably one of the first big three games.
17:06
Speaker 1: The other two are survival and reproduction. But Noel riddle
17:11
Speaker 1: is this, How does a made up word like the
17:15
Speaker 1: beautiful ones all three of us just described, how does
17:19
Speaker 1: it become quote unquote real or accepted?
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Speaker 2: Well, I guess that depends on the context. Of the question, like,
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Speaker 2: are we talking about how in the history of the
17:29
Speaker 2: human race a word becomes real in terms of its usage,
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Speaker 2: or are we talking about like officially on paper, recognized
17:37
Speaker 2: by some governing body of language, like in the Phantom Tollbooth,
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Speaker 2: does a word become quote unquote accepted? Because I think
17:44
Speaker 2: whichever one we're talking about, the answer is it depends.
17:50
Speaker 3: Right.
17:50
Speaker 1: Oh man, you're good at this. I missed when we
17:56
Speaker 1: had I've missed you guys when we weren't recording.
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Speaker 2: Oh sank it. Honestly, dude, It's been really great to
18:03
Speaker 2: have the break, because not to say that I was
18:05
Speaker 2: getting burned out or anything like that, but it's just
18:07
Speaker 2: we do a lot of this, and having that break
18:09
Speaker 2: in that reset, I've just been really fired up to
18:12
Speaker 2: do this with y'all and excited to be here some
18:15
Speaker 2: feelings mutually.
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Speaker 1: It's just such a great question you posed, because in
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Speaker 1: the days of old and the Empires of old, this
18:23
Speaker 1: was so ad hoc. Like what you just heard us do, folks,
18:29
Speaker 1: is what really happened throughout history. Most people could not
18:33
Speaker 1: read a written language, and words were drifting in and
18:37
Speaker 1: out of meaning, pronunciation, and spelling to a crazy degree.
18:42
Speaker 1: A lot of a lot of good rulers of various
18:46
Speaker 1: empires were aware of this, so they tried to, you know,
18:49
Speaker 1: pull a hammer Robbie and codify stuff. But some of
18:54
Speaker 1: them actively suppressed the power of literacy and they tried
18:58
Speaker 1: to restrict they do that.
19:01
Speaker 2: I don't know. I can't think of I can't think
19:02
Speaker 2: of a logical reason why you don't want to keep
19:04
Speaker 2: people dumb.
19:05
Speaker 1: I don't have a single flargle for it.
19:07
Speaker 2: No, wait, what is bargo bargle? It's it's it gets
19:17
Speaker 2: a cartoon character, but it's also just like it is
19:20
Speaker 2: a clear example of like clearly the Internet attempting to
19:24
Speaker 2: come up with a new word. There is something called
19:25
Speaker 2: blargo flargle that is some kind of board game. Zombie addition,
19:30
Speaker 2: it says here.
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Speaker 5: Ben, the long story short is floggles whatever you need
19:34
Speaker 5: it to be six seven.
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Speaker 1: Oh man, you guys are so chill. I love this.
19:39
Speaker 2: What's a song blargo flargle Zombie edition. This is the
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Speaker 2: The insrot of the song is just blargo flargle over
19:45
Speaker 2: and over again, and then at the end goes gra
19:48
Speaker 2: When the day is long and the mind is numb,
19:50
Speaker 2: blargo flargles. The words that come no rhyme or reason,
19:53
Speaker 2: just a silly sound blargo flargle when no thoughts are found.
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Speaker 1: That's crazy that they say no rhyme or reason, It'll
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Speaker 1: who of them that rhymes and a pair.
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Speaker 2: Of words that are clearly designed around the fact.
20:04
Speaker 1: That they so. The idea of repressing knowledge is definitely
20:10
Speaker 1: sith Lord stuff. I think we could argue, or let's
20:14
Speaker 1: through Max Max, what's the Star Trek equivalent of a
20:17
Speaker 1: sith Lord.
20:19
Speaker 4: I don't know. The Borg maybe, yeah, I mean, but
20:23
Speaker 4: even the.
20:23
Speaker 2: Border they have an imperative though it's not like they're mean,
20:26
Speaker 2: They just are this thing, right.
20:28
Speaker 5: Yeah, you could argue the Borger just kind of what
20:30
Speaker 5: the programming is. That's what I mean, they're just doing.
20:34
Speaker 5: I mean, you look at the character like Hugh from TNG,
20:37
Speaker 5: who is just like you know, I will make your
20:38
Speaker 5: life better if you're gonna simulate it. Or maybe that's
20:41
Speaker 5: from a different episode, but argue that.
20:43
Speaker 1: But that's Star Trek T means the next generation truth.
20:49
Speaker 2: Seeing of all this kind of stuff. Shout out to Pluribus,
20:52
Speaker 2: by the way, and do check that show. It incorporates
20:55
Speaker 2: a lot of what we're talking about in terms of
20:58
Speaker 2: hive mind kind of stuff. It's a very very very
21:00
Speaker 2: cool depiction of that kind of sci fi trophe. But
21:03
Speaker 2: let's get back on jack that we're talking about suppression
21:06
Speaker 2: of language and the fact that in general, in the
21:09
Speaker 2: days of old, most people couldn't read, so the arbiter
21:12
Speaker 2: of which words became words fell to those in the
21:15
Speaker 2: top toppy top top.
21:18
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, ex oh man, you nailed it. This also
21:22
Speaker 1: shows us this longstanding habit of suppressing knowledge shows us
21:28
Speaker 1: the power of the written word and the power of
21:30
Speaker 1: the book. You know, we've mentioned it before, nol. Reading
21:34
Speaker 1: something written by your favorite dead author is a lot
21:38
Speaker 1: like necromancy or time travel, and I would say the
21:41
Speaker 1: same with hearing ancient songs.
21:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's transportive. And one thing you start to see
21:49
Speaker 2: in fascist regimes is the suppression of stories because of
21:54
Speaker 2: how powerful they are to communicate ideas and to change
21:59
Speaker 2: hearts and mind or to put someone in someone else's shoes.
22:02
Speaker 2: It is an absolute superpower.
22:04
Speaker 1: And thankfully, humanity soldiered on through no small numbers of disasters.
22:12
Speaker 1: Some were natural disasters, some were created by people and polity.
22:17
Speaker 1: But now there's not just one system of word adoption.
22:22
Speaker 1: There are several systems. So we have created a word, right,
22:27
Speaker 1: we're still playing a log at home. We want legitimacy.
22:31
Speaker 1: How do we get our word in the dictionary.
22:35
Speaker 2: It's so crazy, man, Yeah, I mean we it always
22:38
Speaker 2: makes our list at the end of every year, the
22:40
Speaker 2: Websters or Cambridge or Oxford rather their word of the Year,
22:45
Speaker 2: which I believe this year. Well, you know, in previous
22:48
Speaker 2: years with stuff like brain rot, which you know, you
22:50
Speaker 2: could argue that combining two existing words together into one
22:54
Speaker 2: word makes a new word, and it is something that
22:56
Speaker 2: was just very much in the zeitgeist. So a lot
22:59
Speaker 2: of this slang and a lot of these words that
23:01
Speaker 2: have ended up in that Toronto slang thing I was
23:03
Speaker 2: talking about earlier are the kinds of things you're going
23:05
Speaker 2: to really start seeing thrown around as quote unquote new words.
23:09
Speaker 2: One hundred percent, way more to it than just pop
23:11
Speaker 2: culture stuff. The lovely folks at Webster, Miriam, they've combed
23:16
Speaker 2: through existing literature, right like oh, sleuthing for new words,
23:21
Speaker 2: changes in language, new uses.
23:25
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Different dictionaries are going to have their various
23:30
Speaker 1: sort of house rules methods for selecting words to be
23:34
Speaker 1: included in their newer editions. But they're more or less
23:39
Speaker 1: looking for the same criteria. It's kind of like how
23:43
Speaker 1: point six to one fourish of a mile is technically
23:50
Speaker 1: one kilometer, but both of those measurements describe the exact
23:54
Speaker 1: same amount of distance. If you want your word canonical, buckerouse,
24:00
Speaker 1: we got to get it in print. If you want
24:01
Speaker 1: to get a nod from the Oxford English Dictionary, you.
24:06
Speaker 2: Got the fancy.
24:08
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, they're so fancy. They don't even wear ties, man,
24:11
Speaker 1: they wear cravats.
24:13
Speaker 2: Mm hm yeah, the fanciest.
24:15
Speaker 1: Do you wear a cravat? Have you ever?
24:16
Speaker 2: Worn't know the difference in ava?
24:18
Speaker 1: And I'm not gonna look like I feel like it's
24:20
Speaker 1: a fancy It's like a scarf that goes inside your colleague.
24:23
Speaker 2: What's an ascot? Oh my gosh, what is Fred wearing?
24:27
Speaker 2: Scooby do? Is that a cravat? And ask that's an ascot?
24:30
Speaker 1: That's an ascot.
24:31
Speaker 2: But he's got a little scarf action going on. So there.
24:34
Speaker 2: I can't be the only one wondering.
24:35
Speaker 1: I'm on it all right, Max, Max is gonna update.
24:38
Speaker 2: You're pulling up the facts.
24:40
Speaker 1: He is. We're so excited. I love the instrumental version
24:44
Speaker 1: of Max with the facts as well. Man, it's just
24:47
Speaker 1: so hype.
24:48
Speaker 2: Uh So, it's a Matt Frederick for composing the absolutely
24:52
Speaker 2: mellifluous bop.
24:53
Speaker 1: Oh yes and melifluous. What a wonderful word fan. Uh
24:58
Speaker 1: So it's around eighteen fifty seven, and the the eggheads
25:04
Speaker 1: over at Oxford have used a reading program ever since
25:08
Speaker 1: then to do what you've just described. Noel, to find
25:13
Speaker 1: what they consider use cases appropriate quotations for each entry
25:20
Speaker 1: in their dictionary.
25:21
Speaker 2: Already got me thinking, how AI is going to start
25:23
Speaker 2: being used for this moving forward, and then it's going
25:25
Speaker 2: to influence the outcome. And yeah, it's like a or
25:29
Speaker 2: a Boroughs kind of situation.
25:31
Speaker 1: I am Jack's lack of surprise.
25:33
Speaker 2: Just thinking there's kind of no way around it, because
25:36
Speaker 2: what you're even describing is reading programs.
25:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's you know, a precursor. It's all of this
25:41
Speaker 3: one hundred percent pattern recognition. So in their reading program
25:46
Speaker 3: department for OED, we've got fifty lexicographers and they read
25:53
Speaker 3: almost every possible thing that can be read. And I
25:58
Speaker 3: agree with you reluctantly this probably goes into large language models.
26:05
Speaker 3: At this point, we're not talking just novels. Newspapers. Should
26:09
Speaker 3: it still exist? We're talking about transcripts from TV and
26:13
Speaker 3: song lyrics and magazines and social media. And now we
26:17
Speaker 3: returned with super producer mats.
26:20
Speaker 4: Give us all right, I got some surprises right here.
26:23
Speaker 5: I was not a secondent either, But a uh, A
26:26
Speaker 5: cravat is kind of an umbrella term that includes things
26:30
Speaker 5: like bow ties, ascots, and actual ties.
26:33
Speaker 2: So there's a diagram situation.
26:35
Speaker 4: Yeah, well so no, like it's actually it's a catch
26:38
Speaker 4: up floats. It's a floats are Yeah, it's like.
26:40
Speaker 1: How all mazes or puzzles, but not all puzzles are amazing.
26:44
Speaker 2: But in this case all no, right, exactly, got it?
26:47
Speaker 5: So yeah, ties and uh, ascots are both cravats. But
26:52
Speaker 5: just because it's a cravat doesn't mean it's a tie.
26:54
Speaker 2: There you go love that, oh my god.
26:59
Speaker 5: And ascot is formal necktie worn with a morning dress,
27:02
Speaker 5: tied with a rudimentary knot, worn over the shirt and
27:05
Speaker 5: secured with a pin. It says style of cravat that
27:08
Speaker 5: is from bespoke unit.
27:12
Speaker 2: Okay, it's the kind of thing you'd see a Dracula wearing.
27:15
Speaker 1: Yes, all right, and we're gonna quit while we're ahead.
27:19
Speaker 1: Max with the facts. Okay, so we're back. We're uh,
27:45
Speaker 1: we're reading. We're in the reading department. Dream job for
27:49
Speaker 1: some people, nightmare job for others. And while we're reading,
27:53
Speaker 1: we're on the lookout for the newest words. We see
27:57
Speaker 1: Toronto slang, we do. We send it to our little database.
28:02
Speaker 2: They do a little fact check, check out the prevalence
28:05
Speaker 2: of the usage.
28:06
Speaker 1: Right.
28:07
Speaker 2: These editors spend a lot of time manually going through
28:11
Speaker 2: this stuff, reading all published materials, checking the automated scans.
28:16
Speaker 2: I guess of all of this stuff if they find
28:19
Speaker 2: in databases, and I imagine online, because that's gosh, that's
28:22
Speaker 2: I mean, that's where most language is curated these days.
28:25
Speaker 2: It would seem not most, but if you look at
28:27
Speaker 2: we're going to get to it at the end. The
28:29
Speaker 2: words of the year, so many of them in the
28:31
Speaker 2: last handful of years have been almost entirely Internet related.
28:37
Speaker 3: Yeah.
28:37
Speaker 1: So, like you were saying, the editor that gets this
28:42
Speaker 1: stuff from the database is going to go back toward
28:45
Speaker 1: a specific word and say how long has it been
28:49
Speaker 1: in use, how popular, how prevalent is this term. For
28:54
Speaker 1: our buddies at Oxford, there's kind of a rule of thumb.
28:58
Speaker 1: Still a bit ad hoc. We call it the triple
29:01
Speaker 1: five rule. To get into the dictionary, to be considered
29:06
Speaker 1: for that helcy on space, your word has to be
29:10
Speaker 1: in print five times in five different sources, over a
29:14
Speaker 1: period of five years. Triple five rule. And Nola, I
29:19
Speaker 1: love what you're pointing out, because pre social media that
29:24
Speaker 1: was a high bar. But now post social media, that's
29:29
Speaker 1: one weird day on Twitter or TikTok.
29:32
Speaker 3: Oh.
29:32
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And I mean words come and go as we're
29:35
Speaker 2: going to get to, and now more than ever, because
29:39
Speaker 2: not all words are slang. Of course, all slang our
29:42
Speaker 2: words and inherent and the idea of slang is that
29:45
Speaker 2: it's a bit of a flash in the pan, and
29:48
Speaker 2: can't we just blast through those these days?
29:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Oxford in particular, I mean, all the major dictionaries,
29:55
Speaker 1: they're doing their best not to be unc consciously repetitive.
30:01
Speaker 1: So when you get a word, you're the you get
30:04
Speaker 1: a word from your database, you're the editor. You say, oh,
30:08
Speaker 1: it's in print five times. Oh it's from five different sources. Oh,
30:12
Speaker 1: this has been going on for at least five years.
30:15
Speaker 1: Your next step is to check something called the Oxford
30:19
Speaker 1: English Corpus. This is another database it collects everything published
30:26
Speaker 1: across the internet. We're talking like two point five billion
30:31
Speaker 1: words of twenty first century English.
30:34
Speaker 2: Of course, and that's always growing. So while specifics of
30:37
Speaker 2: this process you can vary from case to case. There
30:40
Speaker 2: are other dictionaries, of course, that do something very similar
30:44
Speaker 2: as we've already described, like Merriam Webster has their methods,
30:47
Speaker 2: Cambridge has their methods, et cetera. So this is where
30:50
Speaker 2: you sometimes see. Look these dictionaries, especially now, they are
30:57
Speaker 2: still kind of online publications and they're looking the make
31:00
Speaker 2: some headlines. So when they picked that word of the year,
31:03
Speaker 2: it's a little bit of a pr move. It's a
31:05
Speaker 2: little bit of a like, we're the ones that are
31:07
Speaker 2: defining the zeitgeist this time, you know, and you look
31:10
Speaker 2: at the competing publication, let's call them, and you start
31:14
Speaker 2: to see that I'm trying to kind of differentiate themselves.
31:18
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no kidding, men, And I want to lean
31:21
Speaker 1: on you for your for your German acumen. Here. The
31:25
Speaker 1: idea of word of the Year began in nineteen seventy
31:29
Speaker 1: one in Germany and they called it.
31:35
Speaker 2: Just means the year you nailed it though, yeah, thank you.
31:40
Speaker 2: I just tried to get the accident as best I could.
31:42
Speaker 2: It literally translates to word the year death means of
31:46
Speaker 2: the more or less.
31:48
Speaker 1: That's surprising that Germany doesn't have all of it condensed
31:53
Speaker 1: into one crazy phrase.
31:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, they certainly do for a lot of concepts like
31:59
Speaker 2: far Fagnugen and you know Bvangen Heights, bavouta Gong, Gavangen Heights, Bivoutigong,
32:04
Speaker 2: which is one of my favorites, which is like a
32:06
Speaker 2: collective guilt around the Holocaust.
32:10
Speaker 3: That took a turn man. Sorry, it's a perfect example.
32:14
Speaker 3: It's perfect example, and it's my favorite one. So you know,
32:18
Speaker 3: to my point earlier, I think a little bit you
32:21
Speaker 3: can't really capture all the complexity of what happens in
32:23
Speaker 3: the span of a year with a single word. But again,
32:27
Speaker 3: it just goes to show the ways that all of
32:29
Speaker 3: these various organizations are trying to kind of be the
32:33
Speaker 3: one that gets it the closest.
32:35
Speaker 1: And you are so right about the pr aspect, and
32:40
Speaker 1: I would argue it's kind of like dendo chronology, folks,
32:44
Speaker 1: stay tuned.
32:46
Speaker 2: That means I think the study of tree rings.
32:49
Speaker 1: That's the one, yes, of course, where you see history
32:52
Speaker 1: writ large. If you ever want to be humbled. Folks,
32:55
Speaker 1: go get the two uh the stump, Yes, get thee
33:02
Speaker 1: to thy nearest stump.
33:03
Speaker 2: Don't going down though, Look for one that's already been cut.
33:06
Speaker 1: Figure out which year in the ring you were born at,
33:11
Speaker 1: and then go to the current year. It's it's humbling
33:16
Speaker 1: when you see, you know, like a redwood or or
33:20
Speaker 1: something like that. And remember how long these conversations or
33:24
Speaker 1: these lives continue. Similar to the English language, Look we
33:29
Speaker 1: got let's say we got flargel in there. We're obviously
33:34
Speaker 1: incredibly excited about our possibilities. We're waking up. We learn
33:39
Speaker 1: one day that the word we created, like flargel or
33:44
Speaker 1: schlop fizzo, I was on one with that one, or
33:47
Speaker 1: doppel gangbanger, that's inappropriate. What whatever else you created more
33:53
Speaker 1: of a pun or a portmanteau ieau. So now we're
33:59
Speaker 1: we're in the OED, the Mirriam Webster, anything but urban dictionary.
34:05
Speaker 1: We're riding high. We feel like Kanye West post late graduation.
34:11
Speaker 1: You cannot tell me nothing back.
34:12
Speaker 2: When he was still normal.
34:14
Speaker 1: Ish ish back before we do him as well as
34:18
Speaker 1: we do and what it was it?
34:20
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, I'm not comparing Kanye to Hitler, although he
34:22
Speaker 2: would do that himself. McDonald says about Hitler, the more
34:25
Speaker 2: I learned about this guy, the more I don't like him.
34:28
Speaker 1: Right, Norm Gosh, what a legend.
34:32
Speaker 2: I okay.
34:33
Speaker 1: Here's the thing though, And Noel, I think this is
34:36
Speaker 1: what we were alluding to, a bit. You can't get
34:38
Speaker 1: too big for your breeches. We have to remember that
34:42
Speaker 1: thousands of new words and new use cases can make
34:45
Speaker 1: it into a dictionary. But every year those same dictionaries
34:50
Speaker 1: also are going to remove some words.
34:54
Speaker 2: Like slop phizio and doppel gangbanger right right, or for example,
35:00
Speaker 2: it sort of fell out of fashion, you know.
35:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, they were like, come on, man.
35:05
Speaker 2: But Ben, then you'll have a golden moment. And that
35:07
Speaker 2: moment was nineteen ninety nine.
35:10
Speaker 1: There it was. Yeah, Prince was all over the radio.
35:14
Speaker 1: What a time. Miriam Webster has cut words in the past.
35:26
Speaker 1: We've got some examples. Stern fore boast, oh dad, snolly goster.
35:33
Speaker 2: That sounds like a Willy Wonker word. Uh, stylo podium.
35:36
Speaker 1: Stylo podium makes sense? Right?
35:39
Speaker 6: Is it is? Is it a type of lectern? It
35:43
Speaker 6: must be? Where is it where you put a writing instrument?
35:48
Speaker 6: It's no, snolly goster. It's definitely no stylo.
35:51
Speaker 2: Podium might well be the little the little thing you
35:53
Speaker 2: stick your pin in on the like, you know, the clipboard.
35:59
Speaker 1: Right, let's see just context bluing it. Oh, we are
36:02
Speaker 1: totally wrong. What it is an enlargement at the base
36:07
Speaker 1: of the style of flowers in certain plants of the
36:10
Speaker 1: Parsley family.
36:11
Speaker 2: Boring, I know, I wonder, Yeah, no one was referring
36:18
Speaker 2: to that part. It's just too specific.
36:21
Speaker 1: No one was looking at a bunch of beautiful flowers
36:25
Speaker 1: and going we should admire this stide of.
36:27
Speaker 2: Podium maybe flower you know, scientists were, And that does
36:31
Speaker 2: bring up a point. There are obviously words that are
36:34
Speaker 2: considered like more jargon or very very very industry focused.
36:39
Speaker 2: Do those make it into the dictionary or is there
36:41
Speaker 2: like a separate list of like super niche industry specific
36:47
Speaker 2: like science words and like you know, stuff evolving a
36:50
Speaker 2: specific industry. And by the way, Ben, I completely concur
36:53
Speaker 2: with what you've put here in this outline. We've got
36:56
Speaker 2: to bring back ho Dad. Do we know what ho
36:57
Speaker 2: Dad even meant? Acquiring minds?
37:01
Speaker 1: Now we could do Dad, It's uh, it's your grandpa's dongle.
37:07
Speaker 2: No, it's surf slang.
37:09
Speaker 1: It's slang. It's someone who shows up to teach and
37:14
Speaker 1: has a surfboard but never actually goes on.
37:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's amazing. Ho Dad specifically, and there's a it
37:21
Speaker 2: looks like there's a well known surf shop also called Dad,
37:25
Speaker 2: which is obviously it's pretty funny.
37:28
Speaker 1: That reminds me of Google with trained kids. Anyway. Yeah, so,
37:33
Speaker 1: uh we know, we know, folks, Max, if you could
37:36
Speaker 1: give us, like a sad crowd sigh some words, do
37:42
Speaker 1: you have to go? And that is okay because it
37:46
Speaker 1: may sound cruel to throw these words out, but we
37:49
Speaker 1: have to remember, uh nol. You and I have talked
37:52
Speaker 1: about this a lot off air. English is a living language, right,
37:57
Speaker 1: Communication is key, not fancy et cetera. English, and the
38:01
Speaker 1: people who are speaking it, or any living language, they're
38:05
Speaker 1: trying to figure out that old technology of communication. What
38:09
Speaker 1: are the first three great games? And that means the
38:11
Speaker 1: dictionaries arguably have to change with that conversation.
38:15
Speaker 2: No doubt. And by the way, Hodad's was a small
38:18
Speaker 2: chain of burger joints in a Diego, not a surf shop.
38:22
Speaker 1: Are they still open?
38:23
Speaker 2: I think so? Yeah, established nineteen seventy three, A tasty burger.
38:28
Speaker 1: We got to go get our tasty burgers.
38:30
Speaker 2: Man, I love a California burger. I do too. They
38:34
Speaker 2: are better.
38:35
Speaker 1: So we can't leave you without a dope phrase. To
38:40
Speaker 1: step two, here are as we've been teasy words of
38:45
Speaker 1: the year from five major dictionaries across twenty twenty five.
38:50
Speaker 1: And folks, we love Knowell's point there about how you
38:54
Speaker 1: can see just like tree rings, you can see large
38:58
Speaker 1: patterns of social change just through these phrases over time.
39:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you are occasionally going to get some doubles.
39:07
Speaker 2: So we'll just go through these respectively, Dictionary dot Com, Mirriam, Webster, Collins, Oxford,
39:11
Speaker 2: and Cambridge to try to just remember that order. We'll
39:15
Speaker 2: probably discuss a little bit some specific ones. But from
39:19
Speaker 2: twenty twenty if you can imagine pandemic pandemic lockdown. Oxford
39:23
Speaker 2: didn't choose a word because I guess they thought everything
39:26
Speaker 2: was too f well they could get to the office.
39:28
Speaker 2: They threw their hands up. Cambridge went with quarantine to
39:31
Speaker 2: pandemic pandemic lockdown. Quarantine. What a year.
39:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, go to twenty twenty one. We've got allyship vaccine
39:39
Speaker 1: n ft VAX with it X and perseverits from our
39:44
Speaker 1: fridge cabridge.
39:46
Speaker 2: It's totally positive. Keep onwards and upwards. Cambridge twenty twenty two.
39:50
Speaker 2: We've got woman, oh color dictionary dot com. That is hilarious.
39:56
Speaker 2: Dictionary dot COM's got some kind of dumb ones. I'm sorry,
40:00
Speaker 2: I'm not. I'm just saying, like every every year woman, Really,
40:04
Speaker 2: I mean, that's weird. That's almost insulting a little. It
40:07
Speaker 2: was there earlier. Yeah, we've been here for years. Don't
40:11
Speaker 2: call it a comeback gas lighting. Uh, it's twenty twenty
40:16
Speaker 2: two kind of the year of me too.
40:19
Speaker 3: Definitely, Okay, I guess so funny and reductive just to
40:24
Speaker 3: have it be woman. The worst joke about that one,
40:26
Speaker 3: by the way, is actually it's pronounced jazz.
40:29
Speaker 2: Lighting rights, perma crisis. That's relatable goblin mode, I remember
40:36
Speaker 2: that one. That's technically two words though at Oxford. I
40:40
Speaker 2: guess you could make it a Onesie and Homer.
40:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's all.
40:44
Speaker 2: These weird little outliers. That's from a Cambridge. I'll thrown
40:47
Speaker 2: another curveball, but happened in twenty twenty three. This is
40:50
Speaker 2: a very ai and starting to get into the brain
40:53
Speaker 2: rot of it all.
40:54
Speaker 1: Yeah. Then we've got hallucinate Authentic AI RIZ and Cambridge
41:02
Speaker 1: comes in swooping with dictionary dot com and they say
41:06
Speaker 1: also hallucinate word.
41:08
Speaker 2: Of the year, and that's of course referring to the
41:10
Speaker 2: thing AI does when it just makes stuff. Up to
41:15
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four, we've got demurror I had a moment,
41:18
Speaker 2: polarization Brat which I love, Charlie XCX Forever brain Rot
41:23
Speaker 2: from Oxford. That was the one that made for most News.
41:25
Speaker 2: I think we definitely talked about that on the pod
41:28
Speaker 2: something I Want You to Know, Strange News episode and
41:30
Speaker 2: Manifest Cambridge.
41:33
Speaker 1: And then we get to twenty twenty five the most
41:36
Speaker 1: recent year, dictionary dot com says six to seven.
41:41
Speaker 3: Those are numbers, Dictionary dot com. Those are numbers six
41:45
Speaker 3: dash seven, not even spelled out, They're just the numbers
41:47
Speaker 3: with a dash. I don't I think that's absurd. We've
41:50
Speaker 3: got slop that's weir webs.
41:52
Speaker 5: It's just just mirrorm Webster saying what Dictionary dot com
41:55
Speaker 5: where the year was.
41:58
Speaker 1: Then we've got Collins with Vibe coding I know.
42:03
Speaker 2: Age baits Parasocial which is very podcast centric.
42:08
Speaker 1: And Cambridge that's that's courtesy of our friends at Cambridge.
42:12
Speaker 2: Cambridge is a little more nuanced in their picks, wouldn't
42:14
Speaker 2: you agree?
42:15
Speaker 1: I would absolutely agree.
42:17
Speaker 2: Like I think I like their takes the best in
42:19
Speaker 2: a lot of ways.
42:20
Speaker 1: Oh, come on, perseverance school behind.
42:24
Speaker 2: I would love to see the data backing that one up. Though,
42:26
Speaker 2: It's like, what contexts are people just throwing that word
42:29
Speaker 2: around in twenty twenty one?
42:30
Speaker 1: It's the word they wanted to bring to the masses.
42:34
Speaker 1: To be honest, we also know that there are regular
42:40
Speaker 1: pulls and rankings, very non scientific, very self reporting of
42:44
Speaker 1: the quote unquote worst or most misliked words in English.
42:50
Speaker 1: I think we all know a couple of characters from
42:53
Speaker 1: this rogues gallery moist always phlegm.
42:58
Speaker 2: Word of versions, right, phlam ointments. I would also argue ungwint,
43:04
Speaker 2: which is a sister word ointment panties and slurp slurp,
43:11
Speaker 2: I don't love you don't love slur But that would
43:13
Speaker 2: be an automotopia describing the sound of sucking up you know,
43:18
Speaker 2: stuff in your mouth right right.
43:20
Speaker 1: And we talked a little bit off air with our
43:24
Speaker 1: with our brother in arms Max about about favorite non
43:30
Speaker 1: favorite words. You nailed it with word of version, Noel
43:34
Speaker 1: do you have a favorite word?
43:37
Speaker 2: Flargyl well doud?
43:40
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, that's it, folks, this is our show.
43:44
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us for a very
43:47
Speaker 1: meta episode where we use words to talk about words.
43:51
Speaker 1: Good luck getting into the dictionary. Our last riddle for
43:55
Speaker 1: today is the following. Can you guess the most common
43:59
Speaker 1: word in the English language?
44:01
Speaker 2: It's probably an article I think we talked about. Is
44:04
Speaker 2: it a or the ah? Did I get it? Am
44:09
Speaker 2: my clothes?
44:10
Speaker 1: You nailed it, man, It's the most common word in
44:14
Speaker 1: the English language. You folks are just the best. Thank
44:20
Speaker 1: you so much for hanging out with us. We cannot
44:24
Speaker 1: wait to hang out with you more in the future.
44:27
Speaker 1: Now you often hear us refer to a show called
44:30
Speaker 1: stuff they Don't Want you to Know, which we do
44:33
Speaker 1: with our brothers in arms, Matt, Frederick and Dylan the
44:38
Speaker 1: Tennessee pal Fagan. You can find us on Netflix.
44:42
Speaker 2: It's crazy, it's true. We just started doing that in
44:44
Speaker 2: the new year. Coming to a Netflix tab near you
44:49
Speaker 2: look for podcasts. I think you can actually already go
44:51
Speaker 2: and subscribe, sort of hit the little belt to get notification.
44:54
Speaker 2: But yeah, remind doing a new thing on Netflix. They're
44:57
Speaker 2: trying to, you know, bring podcasts into the fold. So
44:59
Speaker 2: we're doing and two of our weekly episodes the kind
45:02
Speaker 2: of deep dive, topic driven episodes of soth the I
45:06
Speaker 2: Don't Want You To Know as video as well that
45:08
Speaker 2: you can find on Netflix coming very soon.
45:11
Speaker 1: And big, big thanks of course to our super producer
45:15
Speaker 1: mister Max Williams Margot, mister Max Flargel Williams perfect Hey, Max,
45:22
Speaker 1: favorite non favorite word, what do you got?
45:25
Speaker 5: My favorite non favorite word fair word? So before and
45:31
Speaker 5: I think Noel wasn't on the call yet, but my
45:32
Speaker 5: favorite word is Q because it is just it is
45:36
Speaker 5: just like the leftover parts of a word. They're like, ah,
45:39
Speaker 5: we'll pretty just put a Q and a U and
45:42
Speaker 5: then I don't know an E and then what else.
45:44
Speaker 2: That I can never remember how to spell correctly.
45:46
Speaker 5: I think it's the only word in the English like
45:49
Speaker 5: Q you e.
45:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, four straight follows, I know you nailed it.
45:55
Speaker 5: One I have is bookkeeper because it is double o,
46:00
Speaker 5: double kuble eublep.
46:03
Speaker 2: In a row. You know what? They say, the most
46:05
Speaker 2: beautiful word in the English languages, guys cellar door, Yeah,
46:09
Speaker 2: Tony dark forever.
46:12
Speaker 1: This is just such a weird language. The English language
46:17
Speaker 1: is spoken today is a non consensual game of piracy
46:20
Speaker 1: and improv And thank you for sailing the high linguistic.
46:24
Speaker 2: Seas with us.
46:25
Speaker 1: Big big thanks, of course to Jonathan Strickland, aka the
46:30
Speaker 1: Twister of fellow etymology enthusiasts.
46:33
Speaker 2: Long may he reign over his fiefdom of lies.
46:38
Speaker 1: That was good, big thanks to doctor Rachel Big Spinach, Lance,
46:45
Speaker 1: aj Bahamas, Jacobs, who.
46:47
Speaker 2: Else rasiotis and Jeff co you're in spirit of course,
46:50
Speaker 2: uh and you Ben what a great research doctor was.
46:53
Speaker 2: We'll be coming back soon with some more ridiculous history
46:57
Speaker 2: for all of you find people out there. We'll see
47:00
Speaker 2: you next.
47:00
Speaker 3: Epbox.
47:07
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
47:11
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.