&lt;p&gt;[This episode first aired December 19, 2008.]&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;There&#039;s nothing like an oddly phrased headline to brighten your day. How about &quot;Actor Sent to Jail for Not Finishing Sentence&quot;? Or &quot;Queen Mary Having Bottom Scraped&quot;? Same for signs that make you do a double take, like &quot;Senior Citizens! Buy One, Get One Free.&quot; A San Diego caller shares a couple of her favorite oddly worded signs, and the hosts mention a few of their own.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If someone&#039;s driving you bonkers, you&#039;d be forgiven for grumbling, &quot;He&#039;s such a pill!&quot; But why a pill?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Did Grandpa ever enthuse about Grandma&#039;s cooking with the words &quot;Good stuff, Maynard!&quot; A Waukesha, Wisconsin caller remembers his own grandfather doing that, and wants to know how this expression came about. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In an earlier episode, http://.waywordradio.org/word-encounters-of-the-first-kind/, we discussed the slang term sketchy, meaning &quot;creepy&quot; or &quot;alarming&quot; or &quot;suspicious.&quot; Grant shares an email from a listener suggesting a link to the world of amphetamine users.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Quiz Guy John Chaneski stops by with a quiz about superlatives. Naturally, his name for the quiz is Best. Puzzle. Ever.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Your brother-in-law the motormouth beats around the bush for so long about something that in exasperation you tell him to &quot;cut to the chase.&quot; The hosts explain the Hollywood roots of this phrase.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;When Barack Obama intoned, &quot;I do not underestimate the enormity of the task ahead,&quot; some grammar sticklers recoiled. Pointing to the word&#039;s roots, they insist that enormity means not &quot;large,&quot; but &quot;out of the ordinary.&quot; A caller who&#039;s been following a heated online dispute about this word asks the hosts for a verdict. They give the president-elect a pass.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Remember when Bugs Bunny used to say, &quot;Now wait just a cotton-pickin&#039; minute?&quot; A caller wants to know if cotton-pickin&#039; has racist overtones. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In an earlier episode, http://waywordradio.org/a-moniker-for-your-monitor/,&lt;br /&gt;we discussed whether there&#039;s a word for &quot;a drawn-out leave-taking&quot;--when, say, a friend says &quot;goodbye&quot; but keeps thinking of &quot;one more thing&quot; to say before exiting. Martha suggested the term doorknob-hanging. Several listeners wrote to say that physicians commonly use the terms getting doorknobbed and doorknob question to mean something similar.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This week&#039;s &quot;Slang This!&quot; contestant, from Cold Spring, Kentucky, tries to puzzle out the meaning of slang terms, including herky and producer&#039;s button. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In certain parts of the South, a small, impromptu gift is variously known by the sibilant synonyms sirsee, surcy, searcy, or circe. A South Carolina woman who&#039;s heard the word all her life is baffled as to where it came from.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Uh-oh. Your credit card&#039;s missing. As you frantically search for it, your mind fast-forwards through the bad things that could happen if it&#039;s been stolen. Then, to your enormous relief, you find the card. Is there a specific word for that kind of immense relief, when something you&#039;ve dreaded doesn&#039;t happen? &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;On the QT means &quot;surreptitiously&quot; or &quot;hush-hush.&quot; Why the letters? Are they an abbreviation?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Martha talks about a favorite Latin-based word: pandiculation. It&#039;s a term that means &quot;the stretching that accompanies yawning.&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;By the way, for more strangely worded signs, check out &quot;The Bad Sign Brigade&quot; on Flickr.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;http://www.flickr.com/groups/labels4dummies/ &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;For amusing headlines and unfortunate journalistic locutions, we recommend the &quot;Sic!&quot; section of Michael Quinion&#039;s newsletter, available from his site, World Wide Words, http://www.worldwidewords.org.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;--&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A Way with Words is a self-supporting independent production. It receives no financial support from NPR, PRI, PBS nor any radio station.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Support the show with your tax deductible donation: 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 an 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;Site: http://waywordradio.org/&lt;br /&gt;Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate/&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 Inc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;feedflare&quot;&gt;
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