Picklebacks and Mountweazels (rebroadcast) - 12 July 2010

<p>[This episode first aired January 15, 2010.]<br /><br />This week on "A Way with Words," Martha and Grant talk about phrases you love to hate, like "Do you mind if I put you on hold?" They also talk about "mountweazels," "jakey bums," "picklebacks," and "step-ins." And which is the proper term: mothers-in-law or mother-in-laws?<br /><br />Some words and phrases you just love to hate: "Your call is important to us." "Do I mind if I put you on hold?" And how about those annoying mid-dinner announcements like "This is a courtesy call"? Martha and Grant talk about some of those phrases and why they make us cringe.<br /><br />Is it "rearing to go" or "raring to go"? "Champing at the bit" or "chomping at the bit"?<br /><br />Which is correct: "mothers-in-law" or "mother-in-laws"?<br /><br />A listener from Clifton Park, New York, says her grandfather was a police officer who used the term "jakey bum" to refer to undesirable characters.<br /><br />Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a word puzzle called "Novel Novels," in which he gives clues to the names of novels similar to familiar ones, except for one letter. Try this one: "This offbeat novel is based on an incident concerning a nudist club and an official at a nearby university." Stumped? Think Norman Mailer's novel with all the "fugs" in it.<br /><br />A Woodbridge, Connecticut, caller tells the story of coming across the following definition for "jungftak" in Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary (1943): "n. A Persian bird, the male of which had only one wing, on the right side, and the female only one wing, on the left side; instead of the missing wings, the male had a hook of bone, and the female an eyelet of bone, and it was by uniting hook and eye that they were enable[d] to fly, -- each, when alone, had to remain on the ground." For years, he wondered whether such a bird actually exists. Grant explains that this type of dictionary entry is what lexicographers call a "mountweazel" -- a fake definition used to catch copyright infringers who would take a diction