Drop a Dime - 7 October 2013

<p>This week on "A Way with Words": Why call it a doggy bag when it's really for your husband? This week on "A Way with Words": Why call it a doggy bag when it's really for your husband? Grant and Martha talk about the language of leftovers and why we eat beef and not cow.  And how old is the typical public-library patron? The answer may surprise you. Plus, in Afghanistan, proverbs and poetry are part of everyday conversation--like the proverb about how every proud porcupine coos to its baby, "Oh, my child of velvet!" Also, the origin of the word khaki, the cycling term Fred, and how to pronounce calliope and kyarn.<br /><br />FULL DETAILS<br /><br />In Afghanistan, proverbs and poetry are part of everyday conversation. When Martha spoke with Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner and And The Mountains Echoed, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, he told her about graffiti in Kabul, which sometimes includes verse from the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi.<br /><br />There are doobies, and then there are good doobies. A caller from Traverse City, Michigan, says her husband refers to himself as a good doobie whenever he'd clean the house or pay the bills. The phrase back goes back to Romper Room, a children's television series, where the Do Bee bumblebee taught kids lessons like, do be a plate cleaner, don't be a plate fussy.<br /><br />To dime someone out is to narc or tattle, common in the days when it cost ten cents to use a pay phone and snitch. Of course, that's when pay phones were used at all.<br /><br />Here's an Afghan proverb about honesty: A tilted load won't reach its destination. <br /><br />In American English, khaki has come to mean "business casual," but it comes from the Farsi word for "earthy." In the 1840s, the British picked it up in the north of India as a descriptor for their sturdy soldiers' pants that matched the color of dust. <br /><br />Every plate that is made, breaks. This Afghan proverb means that all things come to an end.<br /><br />Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a number ga