Upstairs Basement - 9 June 2014

<p>This week on "A Way with Words": Giving your baby an unusual moniker may seem like a great idea at the time. But what if you have second thoughts? One mother of a newborn had such bad namer's remorse, she poured out her heart to strangers online. Speaking of mothers and daughters: Laura Ingalls Wilder didn't write the "Little House on the Prairie" series alone. She had help from her daughter Rose--who turned out to be quite a demanding editor. And where in the world would you find an upstairs basement? Plus: scat singing, jook joints, makes no nevermind, from hell to breakfast, dog pound vs. animal shelter, and what you're supposed to do in an upstairs basement.<br /><br />FULL DETAILS<br /><br />Giving your baby an uncommon name may seem like a swell idea. But what if you're the parent of a newborn and you already have namer’s remorse? <br /><br />A potch or putch is a slap, as in potch in tuchis. This term for spanking related to German Patsch, meaning "a slap." A listener in Springfield, New Hampshire, says her family also used the term potching around to describe her mischievous behavior as a toddler.<br /><br />Scat singing doesn't have any relation to scat, as in "excrement." Musical scat probably derives from the sound of one of the nonsense syllables in such songs.<br /><br />Sitzfleisch, from German words that literally mean "sit-flesh," refers to perseverance--the ability, in other words, to sit and endure something for a long period of time. <br /><br />How is Betsy Ross like tight pants? Our Quiz Guy John Chaneski wants to know.<br /><br />The term dog pound sounds a lot more menacing than animal shelter, until you learn that pound simply has to do with the idea of an enclosed space, as does a pond, which is often formed by enclosing a space and filling it with water.<br /><br />A jook joint is a roadside establishment where all sorts of drinking, dancing, and gambling may occur. Zora Neale Hurston described them in her 1934 essay "Characteristics of Negro Expression," and the term probably derives