Fun With Words and Lexicographer Emily Brewster

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

We're in chambers this week, clearing the docket.

And with me is the man known best for his Brooklyn General Store hat,

of which my six-year-old son also has one, Judge John Hodgman.

That's right.

I can see you, Jesse Thorne.

And you're looking well.

I'm wearing a summer cardigan.

Yeah, well, I mean, please bundle up.

It's got to be all the way down to 100 degrees out there in Los Angeles.

There's only one climate zone in my house.

And so when we set the thermostat to like 78 or 80, which is usually what we do in the hottest parts of the year,

somehow still in my office, it is 32 degrees.

So I'm currently wearing shorts and a t-shirt.

But over my t-shirt, I'm wearing a cashmere cardigan, and I'm also wearing like

wool-lined slippers.

You know, I think that that's the outfit of the pandemic.

Like, we don't know what's happening.

We don't know what we're preparing for.

We don't know what's happening next.

But I love a summer cardigan.

That's why I call you Summer Cardi T.

Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, you're welcome.

I'm a dad.

Also, outside my window right now, thanks to the current disaster situation in California,

they appear to be using red filters on the sky like they were shooting Dune.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It may just be that they've got a few shots left for that Timothy Chalomet Dune.

I look,

I will go on and on and on about that trailer.

But for now, I don't want to go on and on because we've got a very special guest.

I don't want to waste time messing around.

I love you.

But Emily Brewster is back.

Long time.

Long time, long time, year one friend of the court.

Emily Brewster, who listeners will remember, is a lexicographer,

dictionarian,

works at the dictionary, the Merriam Webster Dictionary.

She's an editor there.

And she discovered the word A.

Go back, go back.

That's still true, right, Emily?

Oh, yes, yes, that one's all mine.

Have you discovered any more words since you discovered A?

Oh, gosh, if I discovered any new words.

Sure, infodemic is one I was researching recently.

Really?

Infodemic?

That sounds hot and relevant.

What's that all about?

It's a sharknado with information instead of sharks.

That's a great description.

You know, I should really put that in the actual definition, a sharknado of misinformation or disinformation.

It is that the false and or ambiguous even information that spreads like a pandemic.

Well, that's amazing.

A extremely talented Emily Brewster

is researching the word pandemic.

Did I use A in the way that you put it into the dictionary correctly?

You did, you did.

I think that sense is what, 2D?

And it's supposed to,

it means that the condition of the referent has changed in some way from a former hypothetical condition.

We'll put the link to the episode where we talked all about that on our show page.

But in the meantime, I just realized, like, I just said, a extremely talented Emily Brewster is researching the term pandemic.

When I should say, an extremely talented Emily Brewster is researching the term pandemic.

Did I just discover Anne?

Well, I mean, discover is an interesting word.

What do you mean by discover?

I don't know.

Why don't you look it up?

Yeah, look it up in the frickin' dictionary.

All right, look, I'll explain.

We've got a lot to cover today, and we're going to have a lot of fun with words.

But when I say Emily, because I have great respect for you even though the merriam-webster dictionary twitter account is at war with me

once a month posting that a hot dog is a sandwich that's okay i'm gonna let that go i'll let that go but emily brewster and i have roots back in western massachusetts are you still out there in the pioneer valley emily i am how are things out there hot they're beautiful it's a rainy day today and the rain feels really nice terrific and emily uh uh emily works at the dictionary the merri-webster dictionary she is an editor there.

And when I say she discovered the word A, what I mean is, Emily, you realized that there is a usage of the word A that was not currently covered in the dictionary, and you got it in there.

And it was, as you described,

in the usage of,

well, why don't you give me an example that would be appropriate?

The example that's actually in the definition is a triumphant Ms.

Jones greeted her supporters.

So the A there tells you that she's not always triumphant, that she is different from a former, usual, or hypothetical condition.

Right.

And that's the example of usage in the dictionary.

You put that in that dictionary.

That's right.

When I say an extremely talented Emily Brewster, first of all, you are always extremely talented, so it doesn't make sense.

But an extremely talented Emily Brewster is researching infodemic for the dictionary.

Is Anne,

is that usage of Anne in the dictionary currently, or do I get one now?

No, that's in, you know, and is really just a variant of A or A.

Oh,

I thought I got one.

All right.

The dictionary is not really about glory, really.

I strongly disagree.

You don't know the number of letters we got and get every week with people pedantically seeking glory by correcting my grammar and usage.

We're going to dig into it in a moment.

but first I need to say, you have a new podcast called Word Matters.

Is that correct, Emily?

That is correct.

Tell me about the podcast.

The podcast is for editors chatting about things we uncover in the work of lexicography.

So lexicography is really always a very solitary work.

We don't generally talk to one another.

When I first arrived at Merriam-Webster,

we didn't use email that much yet.

People were still passing around these slips of paper because you would never want to interrupt somebody while they were working.

So it's very solitary work.

But this podcast is for editors talking about things we've discovered in the course of our work.

So like grammar rules, surprising word origins, the hidden weirdness of the English language.

Yes, yes.

New words like infodemic or the use of matriculate.

That means to proceed forth like the football player matriculated down the field.

That is a

thing that happens in the world.

You've never, John, you've never heard Al Michael say that while calling Monday Night Football?

No,

I've got to start watching the rocker matriculating down the field.

Matriculating down the field.

All right, so where and when can we listen to it?

Is it when or when?

Can we listen to it?

Whem?

I just don't want to, I don't want to get in trouble.

Maybe I'm using

available on all the platforms that people use to get their podcasts or also at netm.org.

That's New England Public Media, which is our local public radio and TV station.

They just merged and became New England Public Media.

Yeah,

I fire up my smart speaker regularly to listen to New England Public Media, just to have a taste of

the old public radio station that I I used to listen to out there in Western Mass.

Oh, that's great.

Yeah, I say

Alexa, play Huey Lewis and the news on New England Public Media.

That's your running bit, Jesse.

I just stole it.

Alexa is the program director of New England Public Media.

So before we begin to clear the docket, I just want to say here,

I've been spending a lot of time at the Merriam-Webster website.

And hot dog is defined as a Frankfurter with a typically mild flavor that is heated and usually served in a long split roll.

Says nothing about a sandwich.

Terrific.

Let's move on.

Jesse Thorne, let's clear the ducket.

Well, we're talking word origins.

Here's something from Karen.

She says, my husband insists on pronouncing the word origin with the accent on the second syllable.

Origin.

That is indeed how it's pronounced when it has an ending, such as original, originally, and originated.

Can his pronunciation be defended, or may I continue to correct him when he says it?

So, Emily, as a lexicographer,

how much do you personally involve yourself in pronunciation issues?

Or is that a separate team at the dictionary?

That is separate.

We have a pronunciation editor, and he is in charge of all the pronunciations.

And what do you think this person would say about origin?

Well, it's not an established pronunciation.

That is very clear.

I was about to come down hard on this person because I've always said origin, as in Stan Lee's Secret Origins of Marvel Comics.

That's where every

white man my age learned that term.

That's how you learn how all the people got their superpowers originally.

So, Emily, do you agree that origin is the way to say it?

I know this is not your job.

It's not my job, but it's very clear that origin is the only established pronunciation.

And that this shift in related words, you know, the which syllable is stressed in a particular word for groups of words, this is really common that they change.

Yeah.

How does the pronunciation editor did I say editor?

Now I have to say it wrong.

How does the pronunciation editor track and update pronunciation?

What do they do?

Go around and just listen to people talk?

Yeah, basically.

I think he mostly stays in one place and listens to people talk.

Does he ever use one of those earhorns?

Like

sort of like you would imagine like an elderly Cyrano de Bergerac would use or whatever.

Like a handle.

He actually has a door on his office.

Most of us just have cubicles, but because he has to listen to audio, and I'm talking like back in the old days when we were in the office together, he has a real office with a door that closes.

So I have no idea.

Maybe he's got earhorns.

Maybe he has people coming in and out of there just very surreptitiously.

I really don't know.

Whoa, what is he listening to in there?

Probably this podcast.

Yeah, I suppose so.

So if I say origin, origin, origin, origin, origin enough times, if I spam the machine, it could get into the dictionary.

No, I mean, it's got to spread.

It's got to be widespread.

It can't just be one very influential person using it.

You overestimate me.

But

this feature of the language going from origin to original and originated.

If this man wants to always say origin, he's really setting himself up for some real difficulties.

Like he's going to have to say, we've got simple, simplify.

He's going to have to say simplicity.

If only to be consistent.

well yeah i mean and why just stop at origin yeah and you get to like you like create create creative creativity

i don't think in the experience of this podcast it's really a priority among the men who listen

to be consistent in their schemes they mostly want attention

Let me give you an example similar to this.

It's a pronunciation issue.

Nick wrote in saying,

I know and I am fine.

Thank you.

Very generous of you.

I know and I am fine with the way people pronounce the word flaccid.

But I would appreciate it if the court would recognize it's supposed to be pronounced flaxid as an accident or accelerate.

Emily, I threw my computer into the garbage when I got this email.

I was so mad.

I had to go down to the recycling room and get it back.

Because you know what?

I looked it up in the dictionary.

Yeah.

Flaccid is an accepted pronunciation.

It's true.

Had you known that?

Well, yeah.

I guess because you work there.

John, you've seen her eyeglasses.

You know.

You know by her signature eyewear that she knows that there's multiple pronunciations that are acceptable for the word flaccid.

Well, and the fact that flaccid is the normal, and it is the dominant pronunciation.

flaccid that is the dominant pronunciation but it really it it really is kind of problematic because one of the few rules that english pronunciation has that is really consistent or almost entirely consistent is that the letter c says s when it c when it has an i e or a y after it this is almost a sacred rule it is so it it is just so consistent

not 100 but the fact that this this one word bucks that trend, I agree.

It's kind of problematic.

So you don't think this word should be allowed to get out there and do its thing?

Oh, well, I mean, of course it should, and it is, and it does, and

that's that.

But I think the writer has got a point.

Oh, I hate it when the writer has a point.

Nick,

you have a point.

Nick said, I know language evolves and grows, and that pronunciations are like dictionary definitions, descriptive, not proscriptive.

But

I say it the way it's spelled with a hard and soft C, and I don't correct folks who say it with two soft C's, and I would appreciate the same.

I have to afford him that grace, or graque, as I say it.

I think it's a pretty, pretty noble approach.

Also, it's where it's, I did notice that the OED only gives the flaxid pronunciation, but that entry has not been touched since 1896.

So flaxid is the origin.

That's the original.

It is.

It is.

It wasn't.

Flaccid, the now-dominant pronunciation was not in a Merriam-Webster dictionary until like 1961.

That was an incredible year.

All right, Nick, you won that round.

What else was that?

That was what Bob Dylan wrote the song The Times They Are a Changing About.

That's right.

Oh, no, I was thinking of Subterranean Homesick Blues.

Why do I know even two Bob Dylan songs?

You're a middle-aged white man, John.

I know, but it's not, I don't have that.

I don't have that, that DNA receptor.

All right.

But it's like the AARP invitations.

They just start appearing in your mail.

Bob Dylan's songs start appearing in your mail when you turn 40.

Let's move on.

Would you even know, I can't move on right now.

Would you even know what someone was talking about if they said flaxid to you?

Because I don't think I would.

Even like, it would have to be very specific context for me to even know what word they were saying.

I, I, I,

it, first of all,

to the young people who are listening, go get the dictionary and look up the word.

I'm not going to tell you what it means.

Yeah, and don't just Google it.

But it's as gross as it sounds in either pronunciation.

Yeah.

Flaccid and flaxid.

If someone said flaxid, I would think they were trying to say flaxseed.

Yeah.

But I guess if you're out there saying schedule instead of schedule

and you're and you're spelling jail gaol

if you're an oed person flax it is the way to go

here's something from heather she says i want to file suit against anyone who uses the word curate to mean organized thoughtfully considered well thought out etc as someone who works in a museum and does real curation the misuse of the word is degrading against my profession and belittles the stuff i actually do curation is more than being thoughtful, it's the physical care of artifacts, art, literature, archives, and other items.

A playlist is not curated.

Emily Brewster, what do you think?

What does the dictionary have to say?

What do you have to say?

The broad use of curate that she's objecting to is only about 20 years old.

So, part of the problem with it is that it's new and

new

uses are bothersome.

And I understand someone who

has the narrower, older use as part of their identity, that it then being used in this kind of broad way that seems so imprecise.

I mean, I feel for her, but there's also a long history of this kind of thing happening in English.

You know, cultivate started out as being about farming.

And in the late 16th century, you could reliably say that that's what it meant, but it was being used figuratively by the late 17th century.

And, you know, fiddle originally meant to like play a fiddle, 14th century, and then, you know, give it a couple hundred years.

And all of a sudden, fiddling

is like, you know,

it's derogatory, and it's for doing something that isn't very meaningful.

Yeah, like playing the violin.

I'm a violist, so

I accept that derogatory terminology.

My nine-year-old is playing the violin now,

but he prefers to just fiddle around on it.

Yeah, that's what you do with the violin.

It's a weasly, whiny instrument with no gravity.

Tell your nine-year-old,

get a viola.

Everyone's going to love, everyone loves a violist.

Everybody loves a violist.

It's that legendary truism.

Look, look, also, Small Pond.

When I was playing in the youth orchestra at the Extension School of the

Boston, of the New New England Conservatory of Music, there were uh

like hundreds of fiddlists.

How many violas were there?

Five.

Guess who?

How good a musician was I?

Medium.

Was I first chair viola?

Yeah.

That meant I sat on the outside.

I got to see it from the stage.

That's where I got my chops as a performer.

Viola is the way to go.

So yeah, language moves from the specific to the figurative all the time.

Yeah.

And I don't think even the finest museum curator could put this genie back into this antique bottle while wearing conservation gloves.

Yeah, it seems like this it feels like this ship has sailed.

But I still understand why someone would object.

I'm mad that you just said this ship has sailed on behalf of actual sailors.

I feel for Heather as well.

That must be hard because I don't think,

I mean, being a museum curator is valuable work that has real meaning that people devote their lives to and do not always get a ton of attention or cash for.

And I appreciate

your curation, Heather.

But I'm just going to say, my adult daughter

curates the heck out of a Spotify playlist.

It's incredible.

And guess what?

She also wears those white conservation gloves while doing it.

To protect them.

Protect the Spotify playlist from oils.

Emily, Jesse, I just received a breaking pronunciation question over the email this morning that I forgot to add.

And

it's from a celebrity guest.

But I'm not going to talk about it until we come back from the break.

That's called a tease.

Okay, let's take a quick break.

More items on the docket coming up in just a minute on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

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Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

We're clearing the docket with lexicographer Emily Brewster.

She's the host of Merriam-Webster's new podcast, Word Matters.

Hodgman, before we took a break, you mentioned that you had received a

pronunciation question, a pronunciation question

from a celebrity guest.

Can you clarify for our audience?

Expand, expound?

I

know

if this is going to be as meaningful to you as it is to me and my dear friend from high school, Sam Potts,

who walked me through the bookstore and pointed out the jacket designs done by this famous book jacket designer way back.

It must have been 1989.

When did Jurassic Park, the book, come out?

I'll tell you, I don't know.

But it was around that time that I learned the name of Chip Kid.

Emily, do you know who Chip Kidd is?

I do not.

John, I know who Chip Kid is.

He was a guest on my radio show once.

Yeah, of course he was.

Incredible and incredibly

influential and virtuosic.

A book designer.

He designed the famous book cover for Jurassic Park that you still see in all the Jurassic worlds.

He's a Batman aficionado and collector, a person of exquisite taste.

And somebody I've been lucky to meet a few times in my life.

If you look up book jacket designer in the dictionary,

Emily, and you don't have a picture of Chip Kidd there, you guys have done it wrong.

No offense.

This guy's a real, all right.

So, but here's the thing.

This is what he writes in.

He just wrote in this morning.

So excited.

So Chip writes, I always contended that the term, and I won't pronounce it, I'll spell it because this is the point.

The term N-E-E, that is N-E with an accent and then E,

as in a woman's birth name

before getting married, if they change their name.

That this word has two syllables and is pronounced nie,

as in, um,

my mom would have been Eileen

Hodgman Nie Callahan.

But Chip says, my late husband, the writer J.D.

McClatchy, begged to differ.

Can you settle this?

I'm going to look up it up in the dictionary.

Have you ever heard of a pronunciation of that word as nie, Emily?

I have not.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it does not seem to be here in the dictionary.

But

Emily,

Chip Kid is one of my heroes, and I don't want to tell him that he's wrong.

Will you please do it for me?

Nie is not an established pronunciation of an EE.

N-E-E?

It's a great Scrabble word.

Yeah.

Especially since N-E with an accent at GU above the E, I think it's an accent in GU,

that's the masculine version.

And then if someone drops that N E on the scrabble board, you just bang in another E there, build right off of it.

But Chip,

I gotta tell you, just because they're those two E's,

you're my hero.

And I know that Nay N E E has two E's.

That's just how it goes.

I don't say chip kid

because you've got two Ds and kid.

It's chip kid.

Icon.

Here's a letter from Stephen.

He says, my coworkers and I are having a dispute over the meaning of the phrase next Wednesday, or for that matter, any day of the week.

My coworker says it always means the literal next Wednesday.

I assert that the meaning changes depending on when in the week it is said.

For example, if I say next Wednesday on a Thursday, it wouldn't be tomorrow.

Rather, it would mean eight days from now.

Please help us define this.

So, Emily Brewster, we actually have ruled, I feel like in the long history of Judge Judge John Hodgman, I've ruled on this before.

Does the dictionary take a position on this, or is this, or do you have a common sense position on it that is not covered in the dictionary?

The dictionary allows for the fact that there is ambiguity in the use of this, but.

Well, then what is the dictionary even for?

Yeah.

Maybe if the dictionary is all about ambiguity, Emily, maybe all the definitions should just say, you know, whatever.

Sorry, Emily.

We apologize.

I apologize.

We're jealous of your signature, I wear.

What is the ambiguity that the dictionary attempts to describe here?

Well, it's like with biannual, right?

Where it can mean, or bi-weekly is the more common word.

It can mean twice a week, or it can mean every other week.

And when both usages are fully established, the dictionary has to report that they are both established.

And that's the word next, it's, you know, it sometimes means the one immediately following, but sometimes it means, you know something a little bit further out i think that the most common usage is for it to be when the day is the very next day

the that would be this

tuesday right or tomorrow right or tomorrow and that when um when we say next tuesday we most often people mean in eight days

yeah that is that that is the ruling of this court as well phew this directly affected my life the other day, John.

Oh?

Yeah,

I inherited my late aunt's record collection, and it's been sitting at my cousin's house in Washington, D.C.

I had planned to go out and collect it at her memorial service, but her memorial service was canceled because of the pandemic.

So it's just been sitting in my cousin's apartment, and she's about to move.

So I

asked my other cousin's husband to get one of his landscaping dudes, he has a landscaping crew, and go and pack them up for me and ship them to here to California.

And he agreed to do it next Saturday.

He said, We're going to come over next Saturday.

Uh-oh.

And when the following Saturday arrived, and you opened up the dictionary and you're like, I don't know what he means.

My cousin texted me from her apartment.

I thought your cousin and your cousin's friend were going to be here and they're not.

What's up?

Do you know?

And we figured out that when he said next Saturday, he meant 10 days from then.

And we had both my cousin and I had presumed that he meant three days from then, or I guess four days from then, whatever.

I mean this Saturday.

Yeah, this coming Saturday, the next Saturday.

Because it was

in that middle region.

It wasn't tomorrow.

Right.

It was three or four days out.

And it turned out he meant later.

I appreciate why there is this ambiguity, because the proximity of day does tend to affect how people think about time.

The opinion of this court

is that

if you refer to this

day,

you are talking, and I understand why it's confusing, because you are talking about the next incidents of that day.

So if it is a Monday and you say this Wednesday, you mean the next time Wednesday comes around.

But if you say next Wednesday, you are talking about Wednesday of the following week, in my opinion.

And this shall forever be.

No ambiguity.

Settled law in the dictionary of the court of Judge John Hodgman.

Two entries.

And the word I discovered.

And

this and next.

I guess that's three entries.

No, I will actually go on the record and say that I think this is a great idea.

And I hope that your ruling really takes hold and that we then have to revise the dictionary to accommodate this ruling because I think it makes a lot of sense.

How do we get it into the dictionary?

You got to know somebody, John.

Here's a letter from Casey.

They write, I teach high school English and I've noticed that people have started to use the word utilize to replace the word use.

This is a major pet peeve of mine.

I'm glad, John, that on our show we're finally getting down to what really matters.

The pet peeves of high school English teachers.

That is what matters.

How dare you!

First of all, writes Casey, they are not synonyms.

Utilize is a specific word that should only be used

when describing chemical processes.

Second, the pretentious use of the word utilize has taken hold in education by dumb people who want to sound smart.

Harsh.

Please, Judge Hodgman, rule that people need to stop using utilize as a synonym of the word use.

Emily, does this come up a lot in lexicography?

Yes, people don't like utilize, and they don't generally like words that end in I-Z-E.

Whoa, that's nothing ambiguous about that at all.

I wasn't expecting such a firm ruling.

Who are the people, the lexicographers, or just in general, people get upset about this?

In general, people get upset about it.

Think about the word incentivize, for example, or the word finalize.

It doesn't really bother so much any, so people so much anymore.

But for most, for the entire second half of the 20th century, people were very upset about finalize.

Even though Webster in 1828, he put demoralize in his 1828 dictionary and people hated it.

What do people hate about eyes?

I don't know.

I don't know.

It dates to, what, the 17th century, I think, and it's very effective for turning a noun or an adjective into a verb.

And it's efficient.

It was created, it was coined by, was it Thomas Nash?

I think I'm not positive,

specifically because he didn't want there to be so many monosyllabic words.

Oh, interesting.

So maybe that's part of why people hate it.

But as far as it, it does, I guess, sound kind of pretentious.

It sounds like a word that has been unnecessarily lengthened, I guess.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, it's interesting because Casey says that utilize is a specific word that should only be used, point taken, when describing chemical processes, but that is not the definition of utilize in Merriam-Webster.

I didn't see a chemical process

definition in the dictionary.

No, the word is in no way linked so specifically only to chemical processes.

So what is the difference between, according to the dictionary, between use and utilize?

How would you distinguish the usage?

Utilize is defined as to make use of, to turn to practical use or account.

Kind of like a step away in utilize, right?

Yeah.

There's like a distance in it.

And use, like, I'm going to use this fork,

but I'm going to utilize this.

fork that you know you might you might be if you're utilizing the fork it's probably because you're gonna do something that is the not the typical thing to do with a fork right It does sound pretentious.

And I think what's interesting to me, and I don't know where Casey picked up this idea that it had a specific scientific

connotation.

High school English teachers have an annual meeting where they gather to share pedentries.

Well, I do think that it might have something to do with the classic rivalry between high school English teachers and high school chemistry teachers.

But in this case, he's actually sanctioning the use by the high school chemistry teachers.

So that's interesting.

Right.

But don't don't you get the sense that Casey is not demonizing, although there's another eyes,

not demoralizing, discrediting the term as being part of the sciences, and that people are using it outside of the specific scientific context, which we now know it doesn't have,

are what...

Casey calls dumb people trying to sound smart by trying to science up their language and make it seem more technical and

edumicated.

Do you know what I mean?

Like, I think that that might, I wonder if that's where Casey picked up this idea.

In any case, I agree with Casey in the sense that using the simplest and clearest version of the word is probably the best.

Here on the Judge John Hodgman podcast, when people are having difficulty expressing themselves, we often encourage them to speak as bluntly and as plainly as the incredible Hulk.

In fact, why did I even say incredible?

The Hulk, you know who I'm talking about.

Hulk smash, Hulk talk, Hulk use, Hulk, Hulk no utilize.

CUNY human utilize, Hulk use.

I think that's clearer.

I'm with you there, Casey.

You know, Casey also identified themselves as a grammar Nazi.

Is this an issue of grammar or usage, Emily, or utilization?

Yeah, this falls into the category of usage for sure, as opposed to grammar.

And people, people use the words interchangeably, but there actually is a distinction between them that certainly linguists hold and lexicographers hold.

And that distinction would be what?

I like to think of it like this.

Grammar is the stuff that a native speaker learns by virtue of being a native speaker.

Usage is more like the manners of the language.

So the way you conjugate verbs, that's grammar.

Right.

Right.

And the, you know, you putting your pronouns in the right place.

That's stuff that no native speaker ever has to think about.

But what the meaning of ironic is, for example, is a usage issue.

That's something that everybody has to learn.

Eventually, all native speakers learn that it's like rain on your wedding day.

Right.

Settle for once and for all.

Ironic.

Oh, man.

You know,

the ironic thing about that is

it's kind of unsettlable.

You really problematized that as I learned my first year of literary theory.

You really tropified and problematized that ironic usage.

Yeah,

look,

usage is how it's used, right?

And grammar is how it's proscribed.

And the two don't often work together.

And I'll say this, Casey.

Thank you for being an English teacher.

Use is clearer than utilize.

Your definition of utilization is wrong.

Sorry.

And you're not, in this case, a grammar Nazi.

You are a usage pedant.

And because I think, especially in the year 2020,

just as Heather the curator felt bad having her specific job generalized, Nazis are a real thing.

I don't, let's just call Nazis Nazis, and let's just call grammar and usage pedants pedants.

And

let's get Nazis out of here.

Let's move on.

Here's something from Ben.

I petition petition the court for a writ of shut your pie hole against my boss, who will not stop using the phrase hone in on.

Hone means sharpen.

You can't hone in on an issue any more than you can sharpen in on an issue.

I ask she be required to avoid the phrase or to use correct phrasing, which is hone in on.

Just as you can say house in on something.

emily ben's got to be right on this one right yeah i'm afraid so

i mean hone in is so commonly used that we do cover it in the dictionary but we recognize that home in is um older more established and that people really hate hone in so you're wise to go with home in like a homing pigeon they're both pretty new though both phrases are hone in

um is about 10 years newer um but it only dates to, what, 1965?

Wow.

So home in.

They're both like mid-20th century phrases.

So, and like, this is what happens, right?

People, people,

like, home in comes from home in just because someone said it the wrong way one time and it sounded okay.

And they didn't realize where it came from.

Irregardless is driving everyone up a tree.

That just got in the dictionary, right?

No, no, it's been in the dictionary for a long time, but there was just a big to-do about it.

Oh,

I thought it just got in.

No, no, no, no.

It's been in a very long time.

So I brought it up because Molly just wrote in from Somerville, Massachusetts, also part of the Commonwealth, Emily, where

you and I once shared residence.

Now I don't, not, well, we didn't live in a home together.

You shared a hone.

We shared a hone.

We shared a tiny hone, a tidy hone together.

But we're both residents of the Commonwealth.

At one point, I was.

My partner, Jack, corrects others when someone uses a word in a way that isn't correct according to the dictionary,

such as literally, irregardless, itching versus scratching, less versus fewer, by accident versus on accident.

The dictionary's got to stay on top of all these different uses, correct?

Yes.

And

when does the dictionary reach a consensus

that

a usage like

by accident versus on accident deserves to be in the dictionary.

Do you have like a meeting every year saying, are we going to let, are we going to finally let people say that they are literally on top of the world?

No.

And again, I go back to the lexicography being very solitary, quiet work.

There are no meetings.

Nobody talks to anybody.

Like, that's actually true.

But it's all,

we write it all down.

So you make a case for it.

I, as a definer, will, you know, write out the evidence that I have reviewed that has led me to draft a particular definition or revision.

And then some another editor above me will review that and say yes or no.

And then that's that.

Let's take a quick break.

We'll be back in just a second.

Judge Hodgman, we're taking a break from clearing the docket.

What have we got upcoming?

Jesse, last week I reminded our listeners to please register to vote and then vote in November.

And before then, join me, if you can, in taking some time.

If possible, every day to get involved and volunteer with the election.

If you're joining me, it'll be in support of Democrats,

volunteering, phone banking, talking to family, donating time and resources, canvassing.

I think the Democratic Party is the best tool for winning the White House this year, the Senate, the House, safeguarding the Supreme Court, the post office, the rule of law, and holding the GOP generally to account for

literally making its election platform whatever Donald Trump wants this year, which is not just dangerous in my opinion, but also in my my opinion, un-American and gross.

Some of you disagree with my support of the Democratic Party.

I get it.

There are Democrats we love.

There are Democrats we don't love.

Greg wrote me

saying he disagreed with me.

I appreciated that.

I owe him a letter back.

I will write back while we don't agree on every point.

I'm glad to hear Greg's words and your words.

If you want to write me at hodgman at maximumfund.org, let's engage.

And thank you for hearing my words.

But, Jesse, two folks wrote in with inspiring, nice letters that include some direct action you can take if you want to.

And I just want to shout out to them.

Meg is a listener in Chicago who helps run a chapter of Swing Left, which is a national organization that's been working on swing races in targeted states and districts since 2017.

They have a new initiative called The Last Weekends, which includes a coalition of other groups, including Indivisible and Color of Change.

And this initiative is to remind people that this year voting isn't enough.

And they're trying to recruit people to commit to volunteering, especially during the last three weekends before the election.

And I checked out the last weekend's website.

It looks fantastic.

There are all sorts of opportunities to phone bank, to write personal letters to voters in states.

They help you every step of the way

to host events if you want to host events.

I am full up for my phone banking this weekend, but I did commit to volunteer to write personal letters to persuadable voters in North Carolina in honor of John Kimball and David Reese of Election Profit Makers.

If you want to check out the last weekend's initiative from Swing Left and Indivisible on Color of Change, I made a bit.ly in honor of Meg.

It's bit.ly slash go get emeg.

That's G-O-G-E-T-E-M-M-E-G, all small letters.

We'll put that up on the show page.

And finally, Zach wrote in.

Zach is not only an activist in Somerville, Massachusetts, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, he is also a former, like me, DJ at WMFO 91.5 on the FM Dial live atop beautiful Curtis Hall on the campus of Tufts University and a former Judge John Hodgman defendant.

And he is personally running a recurring phone bank, getting people to call voters in Pennsylvania.

That's being run out of the victory2020.org organization.

And he recommended that I give it a try.

And so I am going to do it next Sunday.

I'm going to join that phone bank next Sunday.

And if you want to join me there, I mean, we won't get to talk to each other, but you'll get to talk to voters to remind them to register and vote.

And in honor of Zach,

you can check that out at bit.ly slash go getem Zach.

That's G-O-G-E-T-E-M-Z-A-C-H.

Go getem Zach.

Zach also turned me on to another regular phone bank where the people of Somerville are calling their neighbors in the former Massachusetts territory known as Maine.

And Now I've signed up to do it this Tuesday.

And if you want to join me there, you can go to bit.ly, go get em ZaxPal.

G-O-G-E-T-E-M-Z-A-C-H-S-P-A-L.

Of course, Jesse Thorne, you are completely politically neutral.

So this is only an expression of my opinions and beliefs.

Thank you for indulging me, but what have you got going on?

Well, we just launched the fall collection in the put this on shop.

That includes not just, of course, handmade pocket squares from from vintage textiles, probably our signature product, but also all kinds of amazing vintage Americana and international Li Yana.

Among them, a collection of vintage miniature hats.

So in the olden days, when you bought a hat, it would be made for you to your specifications.

And so if you wanted to buy a hat as a gift, you would get a, they would give you a miniature hat to put under the Christmas tree or whatever while the hat was being made.

And I recently obtained an entire collection of these miniature hats.

There are like a dozen of them of different styles, and they all also have miniature hat boxes that they come with from real legendary hat brands like Stetson and Dobbs and so forth.

We also have a collection of mid-century clothing brushes that come in figural holders.

So little dogs and little bears and

little golfers and monkeys and all kinds of shapes.

This was also another collection that I obtained to

keep your clothes clean and ready to wear.

And of course, the classic 1884 book, Surnames as a Science.

Yes.

Among many other things.

Oh, and guess what?

A big collection of production scripts from The Simpsons Season six and seven.

So those are all in our shop at putthisonshop.com now.

And if you use the code Justice, you get free shipping on almost everything in the good old US of A.

So go to putthisonshop.com and use that code Justice and get yourself or a friend or a loved one some treasures.

We'll be back in just a second on Judge John Hodgman.

I'm Emily Fleming.

I'm Jordan Morris.

And I'm Matt Lieb.

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And real cheapskates.

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Find it at maximumfun.org.

Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

We're clearing the docket this week of language disputes.

And several folks wrote in about phonetic spelling errors, which have become commonly used.

Jed doesn't like the use of nother as in that's a whole nother can of worms.

Right, so that one is that's that's like hone in.

That's just a mispronunciation that has now become part of everyday language for a lot of people, right, Emily?

It's actually technically

a new coinage through a process called meta-analysis, which is when a phrase is broken in such a way that a new word is understood or a new pronunciation of a word is granted.

This is the process by which we ended up with the word nickname, which originally was an eek name.

An eek name?

A what?

An eek name.

E-K-E.

N-A-M.

What is eek?

Like to eek out a fortune?

No.

No, I mean this is Middle English.

We're talking like it's super old, right?

And

was, I don't know, unfamiliar, like a familiar name, or I don't even remember what eek means.

Eek name.

yeah yeah something happened with orange

right if you think of what the word is in other familiar languages

right what is it in Spanish

yes exactly so it comes from this Arabic word n a

with a macron over it r-a-n-j

and people english speakers understood it as instead of a narrange or nerange um understood it as an orange right like it's like a misdivision So, this is what happened with Nother.

I think the unfortunate thing for Nother

is that

it really sticks out because Other has also stuck around, because Other isn't always preceded by Anne, your coinage, John, right?

Your discovery.

Right, yeah, yeah.

Right.

Trademark ending.

Good luck with it.

Let me know how it goes.

We pay attention to trademarks.

We really do.

But nuther, this is shocking to me.

Nother dates back to the 14th 14th century.

What?

I know, I know.

These things can be totally shocking.

Jed, you're wrong.

You're so wrong.

What about should of instead of should-have?

We enter this use of of.

It's an auxiliary verb.

And

we label it as non-standard because it is not typically found in published edited text.

There's also one more here, which is

Gabriel has a beef, which is that one can say, I have a plethora of podcasts to listen to, or I have a plethora podcasts to listen to, and they're both correct.

Family, what do you think about this?

Also, similarly, myriad.

I am not familiar with plethora used as an adjective in the way that he describes because myriad is like even I can get pedantic about myriad sometime because people will say, I have a myriad of options.

But isn't it technically correct to say I have myriad options?

They're both correct.

The noun dates to the middle of the 16th century and the adjective dates to the beginning of the 18th century.

So the noun is actually older.

You're just robbing me of my pedantry.

I'm so sorry.

But plethora is a noun.

And looking here in the dictionary, I do not see an adjectival form.

of plethora.

I have plethora.

I have plethora podcasts.

I don't know.

Gabriel is really messing with my mind.

Let's say a plethora of podcasts and myriad of or myriad podcasts.

Let the ambiguity continue.

All right, let's move on.

Here's something finally from Charlotte.

This is a quick dispute.

I lived in San Francisco for seven years.

My friends from California often call the ground the floor.

For example, if we're outside and one of them drops something on the sidewalk, they'll say it fell on the floor.

If we're in a park, they'll call something on the grass on the floor.

I've looked up the definition of floor, and while an ocean floor and a cave floor maybe negate my floor equals indoors and ground equals outdoors understanding, we're very rarely at the bottom of the ocean or in a cave, so I don't think those apply.

Am I wrong to think this is weird?

I don't want them to change how they speak.

I just want to be able to stare at them knowingly each time they say it until they realize what they've said.

My friend from the East Coast agrees.

Thank you.

I just want to silently disapprove of them until they are ashamed.

This person really is from San Francisco.

Emily, you're from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in New England, which is a region of the northeastern United States.

Jesse claims to be from San Francisco, which is a brigadoon-like magic place that supposedly exists on the West Coast.

I've never heard of it myself.

How does the dictionary deal, before we talk about what a floor is,

how does the dictionary deal with regionalism?

Well, we

ignore it to to some degree until it becomes

widely enough known that it kind of expands to enough readership.

But we don't, I mean, we're not, there is, there is an amazing publication called the Dictionary of American Regional English.

And if you really want to know about regionalisms, that's where you go.

Can you say that if someone's in the grass, it's on the floor, Emily?

That sounds crazy to me.

I agree.

I don't think that that's a supportable definition.

If that's a regionalism in California, Jesse, you say you're from San Francisco.

If you drop your burrito in the Presidio,

you remember that old Tony Bennett song, I dropped my burrito in the Presidio?

Sure.

And you're outside, is it on the floor of the Presidio?

I'm married the nub.

No.

The only, no, I would,

this is not familiar to me.

I think Charlotte just has a couple of weird friends and has extrapolated falsely.

The only real regional usage issue that exists in San Francisco is that

in San Francisco, the word cuddy is an adjective meaning like dicey or shady.

And E40 told me that in Vallejo, it means like your buddy, like your cousin, like

your boy, your man,

your main dude.

What about hyphi?

Oh, hyphae is an adjective that

means like

it means like

wild,

funky

good, like an up-tempo good.

Sort of like crunk, but with a different intoxicant.

I just looked it up, Emily.

Hyphi, the San Francisco slang for wild and good is not in the dictionary.

So we get that one.

Emily, you have fizz in there, right?

Fizz as a.

The verb to fizz?

Oh, I thought you meant physiognomy.

It means face.

No, no, no.

Fizz.

T-H, fizz.

T-H?

T-H-I-Z-Z?

Yeah, fizz.

Let's just focus on.

I'm fizzing right now.

Let's just focus on hyphi.

Emily,

look.

How do you spell that?

H-Y-P-H-Y.

Please make a case for hyphi.

It means wild and good in the parlance of San Francisco.

And when you put it in your dictionary, as

I'm sure they will agree, just put in a picture of me and Jesse Thorne arm in arm next to the word.

You don't even have to define it.

Just put the picture in.

Okay.

Emily, what a pleasure to have you here with us again.

Tell us again about your podcast, Word Matters.

We can find it

anywhere you find podcasts and it's starting up now.

Yes, it's been live for a few weeks and we've got new episodes that are released every Wednesday and it's just conversations about language and about words and about misconceptions that people have.

I think it's a lot of fun.

Thank you, Emily, so much for being here as always.

Emily Brewster,

lexicographer editor at the Merriam-Webster Dictionary and a host of Word Matters podcasts, wherever you get podcasts.

Yeah, that's my cuddy.

Thanks so much for having me.

The docket's clear.

That's it for another episode of Judge John Hodgman.

Our producer is Jennifer Marmer.

Follow us on Twitter at Jesse Thorne.

By the way, Jennifer liked it when I was this in.

You couldn't hear her because her mic's off, but I could see in the thing that she liked it when I was this in.

Our producer, Jennifer Marmer, follow us on Twitter at Jesse Thorne at Hodgman.

We're on Instagram at judgejohnhodgman.

Make sure to hashtag your judgejohnhodgman tweets, hashtag jjho, and check out the maximum fund subreddit.

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To discuss this episode, submit your cases at maximumfund.org/slash jjho or email hodgman at maximumfund.org.

We'll talk to you next time on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

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