Raining Cats and Dogs - 28 May 2012

<p>Get out your umbrellas -- it's raining pitchforks and . . . bullfrogs? This week, it's odd expressions that mean "a heavy downpour." Also, holistic vs. wholistic, recurrence vs. reoccurrence, flash drive vs. thumb drive, whether it's good or bad to be jacked up, stomach Steinways and bunheads, and the origin of listless. And not to mince words, but what does the expression "not to mince words" really mean? <br /><br />FULL DETAILS<br /><br />In what profession would you deal with clams, footballs, hairpins, and axes? They're all slang terms used by classical musicians.<br /><br />What's the origin of the term listless? Does it mean you can't find the piece of paper with the groceries you need? No. Listless shares a root with the English word lust. In its most literal sense, listless means "without lust," or "lacking want or desire."<br /><br />Is being jacked up a good thing or a bad thing? It depends. To jack up means "to raise up," as with a car on a lift. But jack up also has a negative meaning, perhaps deriving from hijack or blackjack, suggesting that something's been hurt or cheated. <br /><br />Our Quiz Master John Chaneski has some answers to classic songs in this week's puzzle about song titles in question form. For example, the answer "Because they're too dumb to stay out of it" answers the musical question from Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?"<br /><br />What do we mean by the expression not to mince words? The New York Times' Paul Krugman http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/16/opinion/krugman-europes-economic-suicide.html often uses this idiom meaning "to be straightforward and blunt." The verb mince means "to make small," and is a linguistic relative of such words as diminish, miniature, and minute. Mincing is what you do when you're cutting onions into small pieces or diminishing the force of your speech by using euphemisms. <br /><br />In an earlier episode http://www.waywordradio.org/horse-you-rode-in-on/, we discussed various meanings for the term stove up. One meaning