In response to our conversation about how to handle swearing in high-school classrooms, a longtime teacher shares a strategy that works for her. She insists that anytime students want to swear in her presence, they should instead say the words Moo Cow.

 

Carol from Falmouth, Massachusetts, is curious about this bit of wisdom from her father: As you travel through life, whatever your goal, keep your eye on the doughnut, and not on the hole. The Mayflower Coffee Shop chain, based in New Jersey and New York in the 1920s and 1930s, had a similar slogan. Word historian Barry Popik has collected other versions, including Between optimist and pessimist, the difference is droll. The optimist the doughnut sees, the pessimist the hole. An earlier version: As you ramble through life, Brother, whatever be your goal, keep your eyes upon the doughnut and not upon the hole.

 

Some proper names could also function as verbs. For starters, there's Grant, Bob, Josh, Mark, Chip, and Sue.

 

Gabriel Ray from Virginia Beach, Virginia, wonders about the history of something his grandfather used to say in a shoulder-shrugging way: Everything's duck but the bill. The origin of this phrase is unclear, but it's similar to a couple of old proverbs: Nothing ruins a duck like its bill and A wise duck takes care of its bill both serve as warnings to be careful with the things coming out of one's mouth, or metaphorically, out of one's bill.

 

The old-time radio performer Fred Allen had some great one-liners, such as Hanging is too good for a man who likes puns; he should be drawn and quoted. He also said I like long walks, especially when taken by someone who annoys me. Among his most profound observations: A human being is nothing but a story with skin around it.

 

Quiz Guy John Chaneski's puzzle involves subtracting the names of Greek letters from sentences. For example, the name of which Greek letter could be removed from the following sentence to leave another English word? I piled my gear on the horse that was in front.

 

Gina from Athens, Texas, wonders if there's any rhyme or reason to the names we give to the denizens of a particular place. There are a few general rules for creating demonyms, the names applied to the denizens of a particular locale. George R. Stewart, a professor at the University of California Berkeley, has written extensively on the topic of municipal onomastics, including the books Names on the Land and American Place Names. But there are so many exceptions to any general rules for how demonyms are formed that your best bet is simply to memorize them.

 

The giant statues of Easter Island are called moai. They're the subject of a Nova/National Geographic special about who those statues might have been moved into place. The technique that islanders used to move them may have involved tugging at ropes tied around the statue and extending out opposite sides. The statues could then be moved by tugging from alternate directions and "walked" the way you might move a heavy object like a refrigerator. The indigenous term for this technique is neke neke, which translates as "walking with no legs."

 

Jimmy and his high-school classmates wonder about the pronunciation of words like zooplankton, zoology, and zoological. The traditional pronunciation for many scientific terms that start with zoo- is to use a long o rather than an oo sound. The reason stems from the fact that the original Greek roots for these words use two different Greek letters -– omega, which is a long o, and omicron, which is a short one. These days, though, the word zoo, short for zoological garden, influences the way lay people pronounce those words.

 

Peter in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, asks how the expression I'm beside myself came to mean "upset" or "unsettled." The phrase suggests an out-of-body experience and came into English in the 14th century via a French translation of the Aeneid.

 

Science historian Cecelia Watson's splendid new book Semicolon: The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark is her long love letter to an underappreciated punctuation mark.

 

Marian in Norfolk, Virginia, says a character in the new Downton Abbey movie uses the term swag meaning either "bunting" or "stuff," and wonders if its use in the film is a linguistic anachronism. In fact, swag was used with both those meanings long before the early 20th century, when that story takes place. 

 

Matt, a new college grad in Austin, Texas, wants guidance about what kinds of things are appropriate to share during conversations in the workplace. Sociolinguist Janet Holmes has extensively researched and written about communication in the workplace. 

 

Suzanne in Williamsburg, Virginia, but grew up in Southern California, where she used the term go-aheads for the rubber-soled shoes that other people call flip-flops or rubber thongs or zoris.

 

This episode is hosted by Grant Barrett and Martha Barnette.