Why Do We Call It a 'Piggyback Ride'?

The etymology of the term 'piggyback' goes back to the 1500s, when it had nothing to do with pigs. Learn more in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://people.howstuffworks.com/piggyback-ride.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff.
Lauren vogelbam here. I don't have any scientific statistics about this,
but I'm going to say it's a safe bet that
you have either given or received a piggyback ride at
some point in your life. But if you stop to

(00:22):
ponder that name, the piggyback ride, I mean, what's that
all about. Although some pigs do grow to an impressive size,
we humans have never really ridden on their backs, partially
because they can grow to an impressive size and they
can be opinionated. The origins of the word piggyback stretch
to the mid fifteen hundreds and back. Then, when people

(00:45):
carried bundles of various goods on their backs or shoulders,
or on those of animals, that was called pickpack, since
you picked up a pack to put it on your back,
or possibly pick was a verbal variant of the word pitch,
meaning to eve or fasten, since you were pitching the
pack up on your shoulders either way, As is so

(01:07):
often the case with language, pickpack morphed over the years.
First it became pick a pack, and then pick a
back since the pack being picked went on someone's back.
Things get a little murkier from there. Some people think
that by the mid eighteen hundreds, pick a back morphed
into similar sounding phrases like pick a back or pickyback,

(01:30):
which then eventually became piggyback. Others think that around that
time people were confused by the pick a portion of
pick a back, so they changed it to a word
that they were familiar with that sounded similar piggy This
is a language process called folk etymology. No one knows
for sure whether people in Britain or North America were

(01:52):
the first to bring pigs into the conversation when speaking aloud,
but the earliest written reference seems to be from Britain
from eighteen thirty seven, when a text called a dialogue
in the Devonshire Dialect explained that schoolboys would sometimes carry
each other in a pigaback ride. In the United States,
the earliest written references to piggyback with the meaning that

(02:14):
we use today are from the eighteen eighties. Of course,
today piggyback is used in a wide variety of contexts,
not just for giving kids rides on your shoulders. In
the field of transportation, piggybacking means something riding on top
of something else, such as cars being transported on a
train's flatbed. It's also used in the trucking industry to

(02:35):
denote a trailer that's hauling up to four more trucks
in a chain. Each truck's front is mounted to a
hitch while the rear wheels touch the ground. In astrophotography,
piggybacking describes the practice of attaching a camera to a telescope,
then shooting photos through the camera lens. In the music world,
drummers often employ symbol piggybacking by mounting two or more

(02:58):
symbols on the same stand. Healthcare providers can create intravenous piggybacks,
where a smaller secondary IV bag is connected to the
main line. The piggyback bag is used for intermittent treatments,
and the piggyback setup allows the patient to avoid having
a second dive site PopEd in. And then there's piggybacking credit,

(03:20):
which refers to the practice of becoming an authorized user
on the credit card account of a person with a
good credit rating, which can help you establish credit or
up your credit score. However, the traditional meaning does still apply.
According to Guinness World Records. The fastest mile long piggyback
race was completed in eleven minutes and eleven point eighty

(03:40):
one seconds in twenty fifteen. The event took place on
a track in Smith, England as part of an army fundraiser.
Today's episode is based on the article why do we
call it a piggyback Ride? On HowStuffWorks dot com? Written
by bealanie Red Seepy McManus. Brainstuffs production of iHeartRadio in

(04:01):
partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang.
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