SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
We use words to try to express ourselves, but what if there's really no word for something you really want to say? Maggie Rowe and Emily Garces mind foreign languages for words of which we might make use to come up with new ones. They're host of a podcast, "Fifty Words For Snow," and they join us now from separate locations in the globe - Maggie Rowe's in Los Angeles, Emily Garces from the U.K. Thank you both very much.
MAGGIE ROWE: Thank you, Scott.
EMILY GARCES: Thank you. It's great to be here.
SIMON: I want to ask you about a few words of your - what I'll just refer to it as your vintage - bovimity (ph).
ROWE: (Laughter).
GARCES: That's one of our favorites. That's the word with which Maggie and I compare our different lives. It is the word for the distance in between us and our nearest cow.
SIMON: Oh, bovimity (laughter).
GARCES: My bovimity is about a mile, sometimes less. Sometimes, there's one at the bottom of the garden. And Maggie's bovimity is what, Maggie?
ROWE: Well, we decided about 37 miles, so my bovimity is extremely low.
SIMON: So another word which I have got to use - snoob (ph).
ROWE: Snoob is the awkward pause in conversation that just kind of lies there. It's a snoob, and we like the word. It's a made-up word (laughter). We like the word because you can elongate the word to indicate the length of the awkward pause.
SIMON: Sorry, I was just having a snoob.
(LAUGHTER)
ROWE: Oh, right (laughter).
SIMON: Is it quite true, one in LA, the other in the middle of the U.K., you've never met in person?
ROWE: It's true. We've never met in person. We've been working on this for several years now. And we call each other our musemates (ph), which is a word that we've made up. And it's a friend who is also your creative muse.
SIMON: And how did you strike up this common interest being on opposite sides of the globe? You're both writers.
ROWE: We're both writers. I was on a podcast with Peter Rollins, who's an Irish philosopher, and I was talking about a religion that I made up, a faux religion called Pyrasphere (ph), which was - it had to do with the sacred symbol of a pyramid within a sphere. And Emily reached out to me.
GARCES: I just thought it was about time that someone started a fake religion that combined the sacred power of the pyramid and the sphere, and I found her very interesting. And we connected.
SIMON: Let me ask you both as arbiters of language. Words of the year have come up. Merriam-Webster, for example, says polarization. Oxford University Press says brain rot. Brat is the choice of Collins Dictionary. What do you think of them?
ROWE: You know, you most often hear spoiled brat. Somebody doing things their own way is a spoiled brat. So that one's kind of a kind of a cheeky rebellion, a kind of cheeky resistance to authority, which we think is valuable. But what about the word fatigue? Because we're hearing tip fatigue, screen fatigue, outrage fatigue. But we have learned some words on our podcast that we think would be helpful for the fatigued American or fatigued Brit. We have the Japanese otsukaresama. That means - all of this in one word - it means you have worked hard and done a good job. You should take a well-deserved rest.
SIMON: Otsukaresama?
GARCES: Otsukaresama. And we have more, don't we, Maggie?
ROWE: Give one.
GARCES: It's pronounced slutspurt, which is Swedish for that final push you do to burst through that end goal.
SIMON: Any words you can give us for 2025?
ROWE: One word that we love is eunomia, and it's an ancient Greek word that means seeing the best in others, giving them the benefit of the doubt and being open to their point of view.
SIMON: Maggie Rowe and Emily Garces. They host the podcast "Fifty Words For Snow." Thank you both very much for being with us. It's just been eunomia speaking to you.
ROWE: Thank you.
GARCES: Thank you so much. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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