Where would you find a sports commentator talking about high cheese and ducks on a pond? Here's a hint: both terms are part of what make the language of America’s pastime so colorful. And: a government official in New Zealand proposes a new, more respectful term for someone with autism. Plus, the roots of that beloved Jamaican export, reggae music. Also, hang a snowman, goat rodeo, jimson weed, work-brickle vs. work-brittle, OK vs. okay, and banana bag.

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Ducks on the pond, frozen rope, tumblebug, and high cheese are baseball slang. Ducks on the pond means "runners on base," frozen rope is "a line drive," a tumblebug is "a fielder who makes a catch and adds theatrical flair," and high cheese is "a fastball high in the strike zone." The definitive reference book on baseball slang is The Dickson Baseball Dictionary.

A San Antonio, Texas, middle-schooler has observed that when she and her friends are texting, they use different spellings to indicate agreement. Her friend types OK, but the caller prefers okay. Either is correct. For an engaging, thorough history of the word, however you spell it, check out Allan Metcalf's OK: The Improbable Story of America's Greatest Word.

In baseball, a yakker is a curveball with a big break. The term apparently derives from yawker, a kind of bird that has  the same kind of swooping flight.

A New York City listener enjoys the music played between segments of our show, particularly the reggae tunes, and wonders about the origin of the word reggae. This musical form was popularized by the Jamaican band Toots and the Mayfield, and may be related to the Jamaican patois term streggae, meaning "a loose woman." A great resource for learning about the English spoken in Jamaica is the Dictionary of Jamaican English.

In baseball, to hang a snowman is "to score eight runs in one inning," inspired by the shape of the numeral 8.

Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a "Takeoff" quiz, in which the letter C is removed from a word to yield a rhyming two-word phrase. For example, if someone wanted to find out how old an animal enclosure is, what would they be trying to find?

A woman in Indianapolis, Indiana, says her father regularly used the phrase out in the giggleweeds, meaning "out in the middle of nowhere" or "off the beaten path." Giggleweed is slang for both marijuana and jimson weed, a highly dangerous, hallucinogenic plant, Datura, which resembles the morning glory.

A Montreal, Canada, caller says that when he does something annoying, his wife will say simply, Can you not? He wonders if that construction is grammatically correct.

The plant jimson weed has dangerous hallucinogenic effects. The weed takes its name from Jamestown, Virginia. In 1676, settlers there ingested the weed, and its poisonous effects were vividly described a few years later in a volume called The History and Present State of Virginia.

A man who works as a caregiver in Calais, Vermont, says one of his elderly clients insists on saying banana bag to mean "fanny pack." Banana bag is a term used by horseback riders to refer to a pouch that fits under a saddle.

A government official in New Zealand has devised a new Maori-based glossary to replace some of the English words used by the government for talking about mental health, disability, and addiction. For example, he proposes replacing the word autism with takiwatanga, which translates as "in his or her own time or space."

How did the acronyms POTUS, FLOTUS, and SCOTUS for "President of the United States," "First Lady of the United States," and "Supreme Court of the United States" come about?

Some of us can remember when typing an exclamation mark required hitting four different keys: the shift key, the apostrophe, the backspace, and the period!

Goat rope, goat roping, and goat rodeo describe a "messy, disorganized situation." Grant wrote about these terms in his book The Official Dictionary of Unofficial English.

Kid cheater and child cheater are synonyms for "spatula," because when you're baking a cake, a spatula is so efficient for removing the remnants of a sweet mixture from a bowl that there's little left for a kid to lick off.

A Indianapolis, Indiana, woman remembers that her Kentucky-born grandfather used to say that a lazy person wasn't very work-brickle. The dialectal term work-brickle is a variant of work-brittle, which, in the late 19th century, described someone who was "industrious." Over time, work-brittle also came to mean "lazy," perhaps because of associating the word brittle with the idea of being "delicate" or "fragile." The use of work-brittle in the positive sense of being "energetic and eager to work" is especially common in Indiana.

This episode is hosted by Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett, and produced by Stefanie Levine.

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