Do you ever wonder why the almost-human characters that appear in video games can seem downright creepy? That disturbing sensation is called "the uncanny valley." Speaking of creepy, do you know someone with a morbid fear of clowns? There's a term for that, too. Why do politicians suspend a campaign instead of just ending it? How is it that the sentence Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo actually makes sense? Plus, onomatopoeia for the digital age, a magic word quiz, and the kippie bags and vaporwakes you'll find in the airport security line.FULL DETAILSWhat is it about lifelike robots and the humanoid characters in movies like The Polar Express that feels so disturbing? Robotics scientist Masahiro Mori dubbed this phenomenon the uncanny valley. It's evident with movies like The Polar Express. There are lots of interesting articles explaining this creepy sensation in Slate http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/gaming/2004/06/the_undead_zone.html, Wired, http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-07/19/uncanny-valley-tested, and on the NPR blog. http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2012/01/20/145504032/story-telling-and-the-uncanny-valleyWhen selling a house, the last thing you want is to take a bath--or, for that matter, a haircut. The first of these refers to getting cleaned out of money. The second is an allusion to the idea of being left with just two bits, or 25 cents.Be careful with that lazy man's load! mans-load.html">http://www.fromoldbooks.org/Grose-VulgarTongue/l/lazy-mans-load.html That's the oversize armful you carry when you're transporting things and take too much to avoid making another trip.Why do politicians say they're going to suspend a campaign? Aren't they really just ending it? Under Federal Election Commission funding regulations, politicians can continue to collect money for paying off campaign fees well after an election, so long as their campaign is just suspended. William Safire's Political Dictionary http://books.google.com/books/about/Safire_s_political_dictionary.html?id=c4UoX6-Sv1AC remains the best reference for such political terminology.Would you prefer a low, six-figure salary or a low six-figure salary? With the comma, there are two independent modifiers for the salary; it's six figures and by the speaker's standards, it's low. Without the comma, it's simply less than $500,000. Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a magical puzzle, the answers to which contain the word magic. For example, a motel sign in the '70s might have included the enticement Magic Fingers, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez was a proponent of the literary genre Magic Realism. How do you spell the exclamation that rhymes with the word "woe"? Is it woah or whoa? and-woah.html">http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2009/04/whoa-and-woah.html The correct spelling in the United States is whoa, but when words are primarily translated orally, spelling often varies.If you're as happy as if someone were throwing pork at you, you're pretty darn happy. And if something is higher than a cat's back, it's pretty darn high. Post-9/11, we've heard a lot of new jargon pertaining to travel and security. An example is vaporwake, that term for the airborne trail we leave consisting of our natural scent, perfumes, and the odor of any drugs or weapons we may be carrying. Another example of Transportation Safety Administration terminology: puffer machine, the device that's used to read your vaporwake by blowing a puff of air on you.Why don't nouns have gender in English they way they do in Spanish, French, or German? http://www.quora.com/Why-dont-nouns-in-English-have-gender Before the Middle English period, nouns in English were either masculine, feminine, or neuter. Over time, however, we've moved away from the semantically arbitrary practice of assigning genders to objects that have none. In other words, the linguistic notion of grammatical gender is completely different from biological and social notion of natural gender. Kippie bags, named after the former TSA head Kip Hawley, are those quart-sized bags we put toiletries in when going through airport security.Grant has collected some modern onomatopoeia for the technological age. Try untz, for the beat in dance music, or wub, for the common dubstep sound. Pew pew! works for lasers, and beep, for a computer's beep, is a modern classic.Can you describe a price as cheap or expensive, or are those words properly applied to the item for sale, rather than the price? Across all registers of language, both variants are appropriate.Absenteeism is a problem in the workplace, but so is presenteeism. That's when people who should stay home to nurse a cold or flu insist on coming in to work, risking a turn for the worse or infecting everyone around them.When it comes to words like reckon, is it true that Southerners preserve the Queen's English? For the most part, reckon has its own meanings between the continents, and the more common English spoken in the South is actually of the Scotch or Irish varieties.What do you call a fear of clowns? Coulrophobia, from the ancient Greek term for "one who walks on stilts." Perhaps coulrophobia is a creepy cousin of the uncanny valley. This article from Scientific American offers further explanation. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/anthropology-in-practice/2011/10/31/cant-sleepclown-will-eat-me-why-are-we-afraid-of-clowns/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2nK_qmvJ7AHow many buffaloes can you fit in a sentence? Eight? How about 40? The sentence Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo is a staple of introductory linguistics classes, because it's a great illustration of polysemy, in which one word can have several different meanings. In this case, example, buffalo can be a noun, a verb, an adjective, and a proper noun. It makes more sense to think of it this way: "Buffalo-origin bison that other Buffalo bison intimidate, themselves bully Buffalo bison." ....Support for A Way with Words comes from National University, which invites you to change your future today. Learn more at nu.edu. http://nu.eduWe'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. Learn more about the college and five schools of this nationally ranked, independent Catholic university at sandiego.edu. http://sandiego.edu--A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donateGet your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:Email: words@waywordradio.orgPhone: United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673London +44 20 7193 2113Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donateSite: http://waywordradio.org/Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/Skype: skype://waywordradio Copyright 2012, Wayword LLC.