&lt;p&gt;[This episode first aired February 6, 2010.]&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If you&#039;re inappropriately focused on the minutiae of a project instead of the bigger picture, you&#039;re said to be &quot;bike-shedding.&quot; Grant talks about that modern slang term and Martha discusses a word that goes way back in time, right back to &quot;In the beginning,&quot; in fact. The word is &quot;tohubohu,&quot; and it means a &quot;mess&quot; or &quot;confusion.&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Grant and Martha discuss a new term, &quot;bike-shedding,&quot; and an old one, &quot;tohubohu.&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Where&#039;d we get the term &quot;swan song&quot;? A caller says this expression came up in conversation just before her retirement and she wonders about its origin. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Martha reads email from listeners suggesting alternatives to the word retirement.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Is the word &quot;criteria&quot; singular or plural? &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Quiz Guy John Chaneski&#039;s puzzle is about phrases that suggest a pair of words that are spelled alike, except that in one of them, a letter is doubled. Try to guess the two nearly identical words suggested by this phrase: &quot;Wagered on a root vegetable.&quot; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It&#039;s likely America&#039;s greatest linguistic export: &quot;O.K.&quot; A caller raised in the Philippines is curious about its origin. The hosts give him an answer, and also point out a familiar word in English that derives from the caller&#039;s native language, Tagalog.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;When is it more appropriate to use the word female as opposed to woman?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;David Pogue http://www.davidpogue.com/, technology columnist for the New York Times, grapples with a slang quiz. First he shares own his favorite slang term, &quot;nonversation,&quot; then tries to guess the meaning of the archaic technological slang terms &quot;planktonocrit,&quot; &quot;phenakistoscope,&quot; and &quot;sphygmograph.&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What&#039;s the correct pronunciation of crayon? Is it cray-on? Cran? Crown? Here&#039;s a dialect survey map http://www4.uwm.edu/FLL/linguistics/dialect/staticmaps/q_9.html that shows the distribution of these pronunciations.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A Green Bay, Wisconsin, caller is curious about her mother&#039;s playful interjections. If someone said, &quot;Well,&quot; her mother would add, &quot;Well, well. Three holes in the ground.&quot; If someone started a sentence with &quot;So...&quot; she&#039;d interject, &quot;Buttons on your underwear!&quot; Or if someone said, &quot;See,&quot; she&#039;d add &quot;Said the blind man as he picked up a hammer and saw.&quot; And if they were watching a movie and the dramatic tension rose, she&#039;d declare, &quot;The thought plickens!&quot; The caller wonders if those expressions date back to a particular era or context, and says she&#039;s now taught them to her Indonesian husband. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;--&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Email: words@waywordradio.org&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Phone: &lt;br /&gt;United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673&lt;br /&gt;London +44 20 7193 2113&lt;br /&gt;Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate&lt;br /&gt;Site: http://waywordradio.org/&lt;br /&gt;Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/&lt;br /&gt;Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/&lt;br /&gt;Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/&lt;br /&gt;Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/&lt;br /&gt;Skype: skype://waywordradio &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Copyright 2010, Wayword LLC.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;feedflare&quot;&gt;
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