2024-10-14
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.
Nancy Gabriel wrote to us from Ithaca,
New York to say that her daughter was a precocious reader as a child.
When her little brother was two-ish and she was not quite six,
she said that her brother was a sonofagant.
Oh, oh, I got it.
Do you know what it is?
Yes, but tell me more about the story.
Okay, well, her parents were baffled.
Her daughter said that she called him a Sinovagan because he was being naughty.
She got it from one of her books, I bet.
It's a word she learned from reading, I bet.
Yep, yep.
Do you know the word?
Sinovagan.
Yes.
She just put the stress in the wrong places.
Yeah, yeah, bless her heart.