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? FULL DETAILSIn what profession would you deal with clams, footballs, hairpins, and axes? They're all slang terms used by classical musicians.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."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. 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?"What do we mean by the expression not to mince words? The New York Times' Paul Krugman europes-economic-suicide.html">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. In an earlier episode http://www.waywordradio.org/horse-you-rode-in-on/, we discussed various meanings for the term stove up. One meaning of stove up is "to be in pain from work or exercise to the point where it's hard to move." Similarly, lots of athletes will get stoved fingers from getting them jammed with volleyballs or baseballs. Do you store files on a flash drive, a thumb drive, a USB stick -- or perhaps on a monkey? What do you call the little device that holds flash memory and goes into the USB drive of a computer. Some come in wild forms http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/50-weirdest-usb-flash-drives-ever/, like sushi or animals.Did you ever take lessons to play the stomach Steinway? You know, the accordion? That's another bit of musicians' slang sent in by a listener, along with the term bunhead http://www.doubletongued.org/index.php/dictionary/bunhead/, which means "a ballet dancer." Which is the better term, recurrence or reoccurrence? A look at the corpus of American literature confirms that recurrence is far and away the more commonly used word denoting "something that occurs more than once." Some dictionaries don't even have entries for reoccurrence. An old book of Virginia folk sayings contains such gems as "It's as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth," and "He can't spell A-B-L-E."Is crick a Southern term? Surprisingly, crick, as in creek, is mostly used in New England and the Great Lakes region. The Northeast is also where you'll find people smoking boges, or boags. Both words for "cigarette," apparently derive from the verb "to bogart," discussed in an earlier episode http://www.waywordradio.org/bogarting-bangers/. What do you call a fierce rainfall? There are lots of vivid terms in this country besides it's raining cats and dogs. Some Americans say It's raining pitchforks and hoehandles, or raining pitchforks and bullfrogs. Or they might call a heavy rain a toadstrangler, a ditchworker, or stumpwasher. In other countries http://www.omniglot.com/language/idioms/rain.php, this kind of cacophonous rain is denoted by lots of picturesque phrases involving imaginary falling things, including chair legs, female trolls, ropes, jugs -- and even husbands.If something pertains to a whole system or body, is it holistic or wholistic? Despite that tempting "w," holistic is the correct term. It's an example of folk etymology http://books.google.com/books/about/Folk_etymology.html?id=e0wHAAAAQAAJ, the result of looking at the word whole and assuming that wholistic is the proper correlative. If something's soft and fuzzy, why not call it suvvy? Grant collected that bit of slang during a recent appearance in Potsdam, NY. http://readme.readmedia.com/SUNY-Potsdam-Hosts-First-Ever-Lougheed-Kofoed-Festival-of-the-Arts/3807415Everyone knows New Yorkers and Angelenos, but what do you call someone from Sheboygan, Wisconsin? Demonyms, or the names for people from a given place, can get pretty complicated, but there are seven rules as drawn by George Stewart http://nancyfriedman.typepad.com/away_with_words/demonyms/, and Paul Dickson's book Labels for Locals http://books.google.com/books/about/Labels_for_Locals.html?id=MJpt4QCXWWoC has lots of other answers.An old Chinese proverb says, he who asks a question is a fool for a minute. He who does not remains a fool forever.....Support for A Way with Words also comes from National University, which invites you to change your future today. More at http://www.nu.edu/.We're also grateful for support from the University of San Diego. Since 1949, USD has been on a mission not only to prepare students for the world, but also to change it. 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