The Leonard Lopate Show

Please comment on the use of "problematic" to mean "troublesome".

It grates on me.

Please ask Ms. O'Conner to comment on this sentence, which Verizon uses as an automated message in its voicemail system:

"You have X messages whose retention time is about to expire."

Many thanks!!

Jackie

From Wiktionary:

to fumfer

A Yiddish word meaning to "mumble", most often used to mean to be evasive; can also mean to putter aimlessly or to waste time.

1. to stammer; to mutter nervously or confusedly;

Some common spellings: 'phumpher' and 'fumpher', to a lesser extent 'pfumpher' and 'pfumpfer', and very rarely, 'pfumfer'. Never 'phumfer'. The most common is 'phumpher', followed closely by 'fumfer'.

taxi from Greek tachis (tachys) meaning fast swift. I think.

My grandmother visiting greece said people hailed cabs shouting 'Tachsi! '

I have been bothered by hearing people saying height with a th sound at the end too. I have been noticing this creeping into people's speech over the last several years. Years ago, I never heard anyone say it, and now I hear it all the time. I was wondering if the proliferation of Home Improvement shows could be spreading this mispronunciation.

"Taxi" refers to the metering device.

My Oxford Pocket American Dictionary of Current English lists both pronunciations of February [febrooeree and febyooeree]

also...re: taxi, I think it refers to an old word for travel but was used by the inventor when the modern meter was developed.

cacophony is Greek kako= ugly

Leonard, you're not alone. I also say FeBRUary

and it irks me that people on TV and radio don't.

Also, REALTOR vs REAL A TOR - You hear it in real estate commercials all the time pronounced REAL A TOR

Cowlick - I think it refers to the way in which a calf's hair is often left swirled when the cow licks it clean immediately after birth.

taxi comes from an earlier Eng. form was taxameter (1894), used in horse-drawn cabs.

Kerfuffle is not a neologism.

From Merriam Webster:

Etymology: alteration of carfuffle, from Scots car- (probably from Scottish Gaelic cearr wrong, awkward) + fuffle to become disheveled

chiefly British : DISTURBANCE, FUSS

I was troubled by your patter on the use of the word Miss. If you believe in gender neutral language, then you don't differentiate by a person's marital status or age, unless you do it for both sexes.

Mr. Ms

Sir Madam

I was surprised to hear Patricia O'Connor calling cacophony a Latin word. It is a Greek one, in its both components.

Val Lyubarsky

I'm often appalled at the improper use of the pronoun "you." Frequently I hear it used when "I' or "me" is called for. Are you aware of this, and if so, does it bother you as much as it bothers me?