2025-02-24
53 分钟You're listening to Away With Words, the show about language and how we use it.
I'm Grant Barrett.
And I'm Martha Barnett.
And we received an email from Michael Feeney in Las Vegas, Nevada.
He was telling us about a term that his youngest sister made up one year around Christmas time.
His mother was wrapping lots of presents.
And as she used up the wrapping paper, she would discard each of the empty rolls.
And Michael writes,
We five children would grab the cardboard tubes and run around bopping each other on the head for kicks.
The youngest one didn't have a lot of words yet,
but started yelling the word, barcha, barcha, when she saw one.
And he says,
I assume that that's defined as the sound made by a hollow cardboard tube when it bounces off of somebody's head.
We all adopted that word and used it with our children.
Have you all ever heard this term?
Or can my sister claim its invention?
I hear by christen the term parcha parcha as belonging to your sister.
Congratulations to Michael's sister.
But Martha, over the years,
how many emails and phone calls have we received where families come over names,