Above Your Raisin - 2 February 2015

<p>This week on "A Way with Words," slang online and jargon in the workplace: There's a new kind of hamburger menu that involves pixels, not pickles. It's that little stack of horizontal lines in the corner of a webpage that you click to see more options. You might use a hamburger menu while webrooming--that is, when you go home to buy a product online after inspecting it in a store. Also, a clever new option for an emoticon that means "Oh, well!" It's called a smugshrug. And: what hospital workers mean when they say a potential patient is showing a positive "suitcase sign." Plus, French dictation contests and Chinese dictionary races, pigs for "cops," historical trivia limericks, the military roots of flak, and the subtle difference between talking and speaking.<br /><br />FULL DETAILS<br /><br />Selfie has turned out to be a word that keeps on giving. We have dronies, or selfies taken with drones; healfies, wherein fitness enthusiasts photograph themselves; and now the selfie stick, the most revolutionary selfie-taking device since arms.<br /><br />If you need a variation on the phrase son of gun, there's always or son of a who cut your hair last. It's one of several colorful expressions that a San Diego listener's great aunt used. Others include you're full of old shoes, and, stick some mad money in your budge, in the event that a date goes sour.<br /><br />The term pigs, in reference to police officers, comes from England's underground criminal slang and shows up in the early 1800s. It refers to pigs as vile creatures that take more than their share, akin to police officers who would take the illicit gains of thieves for themselves.<br /><br />After we talked in an earlier episode about what Martha calls anyway friends--those friends you pick right up with after not speaking for a long time--a listener sent in this quip: Friends are like fish, they're fresh when you catch them.<br /><br />Depending on your ancestry, or where in the country you're from, you might pronounce the words this that them there and th