985. This week, we look at the world of whimsical words, including the origins and meanings of terms like "dinkus," "gadzook," "petrichor" and the phrase "whim-wham for a goose's bridle." Plus, I have a quick tip about when to capitalize "mom" and "dad."
985. This week, we look at the world of whimsical words, including the origins and meanings of terms like "dinkus," "gadzook," "petrichor" and the phrase "whim-wham for a goose's bridle." Plus, I have a quick tip about when to capitalize "mom" and "dad."
The "weird words" segment was written by Michaela Dunn, a Wyoming-based editor and publisher for Everywhen Press. She specializes in magical realism, low fantasy, folklore, and fairy tales.
| Edited transcript with links: https://grammar-girl.simplecast.com/episodes/whim-wham/transcript
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Grammar Girl here. I’m Mignon Fogarty, your friendly guide to the English language. We talk about writing, history, rules, and other cool stuff. Today's show is almost all about funny words. First we'll look at weird names for things like "dinkus" and "glabella" (can you guess what those are?), and then with some help from listeners, I dive deep on "whim-wham for a mucket." And buried in the middle, I have a quick tip about when to capitalize "mom" and "dad."
But before we get started, I have a correction from last week's piece about the power of plural pronouns such as "we" and "us." At one point we said these pronouns are second person pronouns, which of course, isn't right. They're first person pronouns. Duh! We corrected the audio in that show right away, so it's not there anymore, and thanks to Grammarpaloosian Sab for quickly and kindly pointing out the error.
by Michaela Dunn
Have you ever been delighted to learn a quirky name for something like the "tittle" (the dot over the letters I and J) or the "grawlix" (the string of symbols that represent swearing in comic books)? Sometimes these words sound positively made up. Which, in a way, they are— all words were made up at some point — but some words sound as though they were created by Doctor Seuss or Lewis Carroll, springing forth from a fictitious world.
Sometimes, these funny-sounding words come from industry-specific jargon. Many times, these names have multiple meanings that people are more commonly familiar with outside the jargon. For example, if you chat with a typographer, you might hear words that describe different parts of letters, and to many a teenage snickering, "crotch" refers to the inside angle where two strokes meet, such as in the capital letter N. A "dinkus," much to the dismay of said teenagers, does not refer to a person being a dork, but instead is the three asterisks in a horizontal line typically found in novels or on web copy to show a natural break.
And gadzooks! There is also the "gadzook" in the typography world. A "gadzook" is an embellishment, or a fancy line, that is originally not part of either letter but connects them together. For example, depending on the typeface, or font, you will occasionally see an embellishment between two L’s at the top that connects the two letters. That is a gadzook. Another way to think about a gadzook is the etymology of the word, which dates back to medieval times. Essentially, a gadzook is a portmanteau of "God’s hooks," referring to the nails by which Christ was fastened to the cross. Specifically, "gadzook" breaks down to "gad-" for "God" and "-zooks" for "hooks," according to Etymonline. So, you can imagine the gadzook of a letter as a hook holding the two characters together.
This is where it’s easy to get lost in a rabbit hole. And egad, this was rather deep rabbit hole, leading through the words related to "gadzook." There’s "gadsbobs" and "gadslid," "gadsbudlikins," "gadswoons," and "gadsnouns." All of which are mild oaths with the part after "gads-" presumably being simply fun things to say. And as you may have guessed, "egad" refers to "God" as a softened oath of exclamation too.
It’s easy to get lost in the world of words. To the point that your “glabella” furrows (the tiny bit of your face between your eyebrows) deep in thought and time disappears, leading to a “wamble” from your stomach. Go sit outside and enjoy the petrichor (the smell after a first rain) and eat some food to settle the “wambling.” Just avoid “chanking” your food (chewing loudly), lest you annoy those around you. With your food, grab a cold beer, but leave the “barm” behind, which forms on top of fermenting beer. Preferring wine, grab that wine bottle instead.
Examining the bottle, you allow your stream of conscience to wander, and you wonder if there is a name for the bottom of the bottle where the glass indents up inside.
Of course, there is! It's a “punt,” but not like punting a football. The punt of a wine bottle has an interesting history. Although the origins aren't certain, it appears the name derives from how the bottles were originally hand-blown. According to "Wine Spectator," in order to have the bottle stand upright, the seam was pushed up by an iron rod called a “punto,” which created additional structural integrity to the bottle. Thus, the indent in the bottle was named the “punt.” The “punto” is commonly referred to as the “punty” in English, derived “from the French “pontil,” a diminutive form from the Latin “punctum,” meaning “a point.”
Looking into the names of objects creates a fun pastime that is easy to get lost in. One funny sounding word leads to another creatively made-up word, and many spawn from an interesting history. Spending time with these odd-sounding words can drag your thoughts down a rather deep rabbit hole that can feel like a splendid fictitious world where Doctor Seuss or Lewis Carroll would spend their time.
That segment was written by Michaela Dunn, a Wyoming-based editor and publisher for Everywhen Press. She specializes in magical realism, low fantasy, folklore, and fairy tales.
by Mignon Fogarty
Next, with Mother's Day in the U.S. having just passed, I'm going to answer a quick, related listener question:
"Hi, yes, I wanted to know when do you capitalize mother and father? Not not when it's to start at the sentence, but within a sentence, thanks."
This comes up a lot because it's actually a little tricky. The way to think about it is to ask whether you're using "mother" as a name or a descriptor. For example, in some families people refer to the matriarch as "Mother" as though it's her name:
You could substitute a name in those sentences.
Since you're using "Mother" as a name, you capitalize it in sentences like that.
But when you're using it as just a descriptor, you don't capitalize it. And a big clue that it's descriptive is if it has a word like "your" or "my" in front of it:
In both those cases, "mother" would be lowercase. And of course, the same rules applied to other titles that can also be names like "dad," "auntie," and "granny."
I hope that helps!
I also have a quick story about text from large language models like ChatGPT. I'm following AI really closely because it affects writers, editors, and teachers; and this week, I saw an especially interesting report from Scientific American saying researchers have found that AI-generated text uses certain words more often than humans. Words like "meticulous," "innovative," "intricate," "commendable," "strategically," "impressively," and the phrase "complex and multifaceted."
It's in Scientific American because they also found that these words are showing up more than would be expected in scientific papers lately, which suggests some researchers are using AI to help write their papers.
So if you think you can recognize AI-generated text, but you aren't sure why, one reason could be the preponderance of these words that I like to call enthusiastic adjectives and adverbs.
by Mignon Fogarty
Finally, before we get to the familect today, I'm happy to report that we've at least partially solved the mystery from our Grammarpaloozian Sue a few episodes ago about why her father would say, "It's a wing wang for a mucket" when he didn't want to answer a question.
Two fabulous listeners messaged me on Instagram to say there's a similar old phrase in Australia! Amanda from Melbourne who's 66 says she remembers the phrase "it's a whim-wham for a goose's bridle" from her childhood. And Wendy from Bundaberg says her grandfather used to say the same thing! He'd sometimes call something useless or pointless a "wing wong for a goose's bridle." She did some web searching and found it on the Oxford Reference website in "A Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms," and there's a Wikipedia page too, both of which include another variation that says, "it's a whim wham for a duck to perch on." And I found a 1914 book on rustic sayings that has a section on "Evasive Replies to the Inquisitive" that lists "a whim-wham for a mustard mill" and "a whim-wham to wind the sun up."
Also, multiple sources say it could be a "wigwam" instead of a "whim wham."
The earliest known use of these phrases was in 1836, and all these different variations — "wing wang," "whim wham" and "wigwam" — remind me of how there are a bunch of different ways to say "kitty-corner," "catty-corner," "keddy-corner," and so on because people hardly ever see them written down, so we often end up interpreting them in different ways.
So where on earth did this silly phrase come from? Well, the Australian National Dictionary Centre says that, as Sue and Wendy reported, it was indeed used both to avoid answering an unwanted question and to refer to "something absurd or preposterous."
The Dictionary Centre says "whim-wham" meant "an ornament" or "a trinket" but "disappeared from the language in the nineteenth century and survived only in this phrase."
So that's cool, and then I looked up "whim-wham" in the Oxford English Dictionary. A citation from a slang dictionary in 1860 says it's "synonymous with 'fiddle-faddle,' and 'riff-raff,'" and the OED itself compares "whim-wham" to "flim-flam," "jim-jam," and "trim-tram," which are all "similarly applied to trivial or frivolous things." And I was also delighted to learn that "whim-wham" gave rise to the words "whimsy" and "whimsical." What whimsical topics we have today!
OK, so a "whim-wham" was a trinket or an ornament, but why "for a goose's bridle," "a duck to perch on," "a mucket" and more? Well, sources say that the earliest incarnation, a goose's bridle, is clearly an absurd thing, so it's just a funny conclusion to an already funny phrase that's sometimes used to describe something absurd. Ducks do perch on things, so that seems like a less apt second half to me, but, you know, people do what people do, and someone liked that choice.
As for why Sue's father changed it to a mucket, well, as we said in the previous episode, a mucket is a type of mollusk, and he grew up on the Chesapeake, which does have muckets. So maybe he heard the word as a child, and it stuck with him as something funny that would make a good ending to this quirky phrase. With so many documented endings, it does seem like people enjoyed personalizing the saying.
Sue was delighted to hear this story, and excited to tell her brother, and says I have the best listeners in the world, and I couldn't agree more. You ARE all the best, and this week, Amanda and Wendy are the cream of the crop. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your memories about "a whim wham for a goose's bridle" because this is the kind of thing I never could have uncovered no matter how long I searched.
And Wendy suggested that this phrase is so wonderful that it needs to be back in style, so to honor Wendy's, Amanda's, and Sue's contributions, I hope you will all look for opportunities to use "whim-wham for a mucket" or maybe add your own nonsensical, funny ending.
Finally, I have a familect story.
Hi, Grammar Girl. This is Denise from Minnesota. I have a familect related to your recent podcast about how to cite AI. Growing up in the 1960s, my brothers and I discovered the perfect name for the cardboard tube inside of a roll of paper towels. It is a doo-dee because that's the most obvious sound one makes with it as soon as it's your turn to be awarded this great prize. I will demonstrate. Do-dee, do-dee, do-dee. The lucky winner of this boon, much to the jealousy of their siblings, would run around the house like crazy, shouting this fabulous word until the tube was mush and no longer functioned. Now that I have a granddaughter, you can bet that I have been collecting doo-dees for her to enjoy as soon as she learns how to make the sound. Thanks for always providing interesting Grammar goodies. Denise."
Thanks so much Denise! This cracked me up and, of course, it's the perfect name for that tube. Many thanks.
If you want to share the story of your familect, your family dialect, or word your family and only your family uses, call the voicemail line at 83-321-4-GIRL. Keep 'em coming! The number is in the show notes, and be sure to tell me the story behind your familect because that’s always the best part.
And if you're a Grammarpalooza subscriber like Sue who started the whole "whim-wham" story, you can also send a voice memo. I send text messages with fun facts a couple of times a week. And it's a great way to support the show and the first two weeks are free. To sign up, visit https://joinsubtext.com/grammar or text "hello" to (917) 540-0876.
Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to ad operations specialist, Morgan Christianson; audio engineer, Nathan Semes; digital operations specialist, Holly Hutchings; marketing assistant, Kamryn Lacey; director of podcasts, Brannan Goetschius; and marketing associate, Davina Tomlin, who just read their 30th book this year. Good job, Davina!
And I’m Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl. Remember to look for "Grammar Girl Conversations." This Thursday, I have an interview with Erin Brenner, about working as a freelance editor, but even if that isn't something that applies to you, we are going to talk about all kinds of writing productivity tools that will truly improve your life.
That's all. Thanks for listening.
***
The following references for the "names of things" segment were not included in the audio, but are included here for completeness.
"A Glossary of Typographic Terms and Definitions," Monotype, https://www.monotype.com/resources/z-typographic-terms https://www.monotype.com/resources/z-typographic-terms
"gadzooks," Online Etymology Dictionary, https://etymonline.com/word/gadzooks (accessed April 22, 2024).
"Notes and Queries," The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-6380,00.html (accessed April 22, 2024).
"What is a Wine Bottle Punt?," Wine Spectator, June 8, 2016, https://www.winespectator.com/articles/what-is-a-wine-bottle-punt-53240 (accessed April 22, 2024).