A Way with Words - language, linguistics, and callers from all over · Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett. Produced by Stefanie Levine.

Not My Circus (Rebroadcast) - 9 June 2025

·54 min·4 clips

How did a Farsi word for 'thing' become baseball slang for a clever fastball?

The excerpt begins with the usual setup. After a sponsor message about Australian Wagyu and a quick hello, Grant Barrett and Martha Barnett ease into the show's comfortable habit of turning real life into a language question. Martha starts with an outdoor concert memory, and Rady Shell at Jacobs Park gives the scene the kind of lived-in detail the show likes. Then Mia calls, and the hosts start turning over bum. They hear it less as a sharp insult and more as a word for something faulty, broken, fake, incorrect, or just not quite right. A bum leg sounds long-suffering and worn down, while a bum deal or bum idea can feel disappointing but survivable. That difference is the fun of the segment. The hosts are not only defining the word; they are listening for its mood in everyday speech. Mia gets pulled into the play of it too. She is thanked, told she does not sound like a bummer, and sent off with good wishes for her guy. Then the show pivots cleanly into a short word feature on fastuous, spelled out letter by letter and separated from both speedy fast and holding fast. Its source is given as Latin, and its meaning lands around excessive pride, vanity, self-importance, and showy wealth, with fastuosity offered as the noun. The word itself does a lot of the work. Fastuous sounds like something with a raised eyebrow, and the hosts enjoy that before the phone line opens again. The close returns to housekeeping: credits for producers and staff, an invitation to call or email, and the reminder that the independent production is supported by listeners and organizations. The excerpt has an easy call-in shape, moving from ad copy to concert memory, caller warmth, wordplay, another caller, and goodbye without feeling hurried.

As heard by us

A friendly tour of bum, fastuous, and the everyday life of words.

A Way With Words spends its time on the small pleasures of language that feel ordinary until someone names them. It starts with bum, a word unpacked as a broken, incorrect, or fake version of something, then settles into milder everyday turns such as bum leg, bum deal, and bum…

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Press play if you want a language chat that turns small words into bigger meanings.

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