March 7, 2026 • 49 mins
Language is beautiful and, in many cases, continually evolving. As a result, we end up with hundreds of strange idioms and figures of speech that we use on a daily basis, with little to no understanding of what they originally meant. Join the guys with special guests Frank Mulherin and Rowan Newbie, the creator of the Pitches podcast, as they explore the bizarre origins of your favorite turns of phrase in this week's Classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow Ridiculous Historians, we are returning to you with a classic,
a series of classics, actually, so stay tuned. This is
one that we immensely enjoyed and Noel, if you recall,
we broked in some friends for this, we did.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
It's another example of what we intended to be an
ongoing series in the early days of the show, and
we only did twice. We had the best of intentions,
and now that I'm remembering what a good time we
had with friends of the show, Frank mulhern and Rowan Newby,
I think we gotta do this again. Idiomatic for the
(00:39):
People This idea of each guest. We could do a
guest list if needed, bring a word and just trace
the origins of it. We love etymology and history of words,
and its bonkers to me that we have not revisited this.
It's also a really clever name and a reference to
hometown heroes are em.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
We must let's roll the tape. This is from twenty
nineteen Idiomatic for the People two, Part one. Ridiculous History
is a production of iHeartRadio. So recently, my co host
(01:39):
Nol and I had an idea that we thought was
just crazy enough to work we had started talking about
all the strange things that happen in the English language.
There's so many sayings that don't quite translate, or if
you heard them in another language, you would say, what
the heck are these people talking about. We thought this
(02:02):
was so fascinating that we wanted to do an episode
on it, and luckily we got green lit by our
super producer, Casey Pegram.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
Nothing goes out without his express approval. Yes, yes, very true.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
He is. He is a king maker here. So you know,
you and I, oh, and I'm Ben by the way.
You and I wanted to do an episode about idioms,
and we didn't want to go into this for a alone,
so we were joined with our good friend and host
of the podcast Pitches Rowan Newby.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Hey, oh here he is.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Oh, there he is.
Speaker 4 (02:36):
He's been here the whole time. He was sitting in
when we were talking about the Statue of Liberty. Uh,
and now we're finally giving him voice.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
We did. We turned on this.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
It's true. But hey, here's the thing. You might remember.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
When we first did this episode, we gave it a
fantastic name. Idiomatic for the people that I mentioned was
coined by a ephemeral friend of the show who you've
heard mentioned plenty of times, multiple times, multiple times, My
dear friend and cohort, Frank the Tank Mulheran.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Hey, guys, Frank joined us today.
Speaker 4 (03:13):
Human he is in the flesh, he has a voice,
he has a soul, and he has some ideas about
some weird idioms. So it's all it's all coming together,
you guys, We're all here.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
We finally did it. We pulled it off, and I
have a feeling that this will be a two parter. No,
to be completely clear with everybody listening this time, we
do know roughly what our friends are going to be presenting, right,
but I think it's safe to say in most cases
we don't know the stories behind these phrases or these words.
(03:46):
So we're experiencing this with you as you listen.
Speaker 4 (03:49):
Yeah, I mean, with four you know, dashingly good looking
and intelligent gentlemen, we did not want to run the
risk of doubling up, so we did give ourselves at
least that luxury of knowing what.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
The other we're gonna do.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
But no, we only researched our own, So there's gonna
be surprises of plenty in today's episode.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Yep, you've paid for the whole seat, but you only
use the eggs.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
You should pay for any.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Well, they paid attention. That's true.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
You always say that time is the most valuable currency
these days, and that has never been more true than
it is today.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
So what do you say, gents who would like to
who would like to kick us off? I'm just gonna
I'm just gonna count down from three and then pixelm oh,
that's like a dad moved.
Speaker 5 (04:33):
I know that's three two?
Speaker 3 (04:38):
All right? What do you got, Frank?
Speaker 5 (04:40):
All right? So recently I went back to my hometown
to visit my parents for their birthdays. They both have
birthdays within three days of each other. Here sweet, super
convenient since I live out of town. So we were
hanging out and we did dinner and drinks and and
gifts exchanges and all that stuff. And then I decided
(05:04):
I was going to go out and hang out with
some of my friends in Augusta, Georgia, where I'm from.
And on my way out, my mom said, y'all have fun,
be safe, and then my dad chimed in with trip
the light fantastic and yeah, no, I'd never heard.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
I've heard this freeze before but massive points to your dad,
what gravitas? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5 (05:32):
And the thing is he had no idea where it
came from, and I asked him about it. Yeah, and we, like,
you know, guessed wildly for a few minutes, despite the
fact that we all have working smartphones. So I left.
It was still a mystery to me, and then I
looked it up later on the next day, and there's
(05:52):
quite a story to it. It goes through several different
iterations and alterations give it to us. So the phrase
itself means to dance nimbly or lightly and move to
a pattern of musical accompaniment. The first variation of it
(06:12):
is found in John Milton's Allegro, and the line is
come and trip it as you go on the light
fantastic toe.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Ah, the old fantastic toe.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Yes, yes, so sing song a lot.
Speaker 5 (06:27):
It really is. And the thing that kind of tripped
me up was in this sense, trip isn't the sort
of normal definition that we think of when it comes
to your feet and moving around. It's more about being nimble,
flit light fleet footage, yes, yes, kind of right, frolicking
or whatever. And so you're in a ballroom and you're
(06:49):
you know, waltzing around the room and and it's just
kind of about you know, enjoying the night and kind
of like living the bonvvant life, and fantastic kind of
means with flair basically, So it's an escalation, yeah, expressivity basically,
And that was kind of like the version that was
(07:11):
around it was just basically John Milton thing. So the
condensed version of the line from Milton appeared in Sidewalks
of New York by Charles B. Lawler and James W.
Blake in eighteen ninety four, and the line is boys
and Girls Together, Me and Mamey o' rourke trip the
(07:32):
light Fantastic on the Sidewalks of New York. The song
is pretty dull. You would think a song by the
name of Sidewalks of New York might be kind.
Speaker 6 (07:42):
Of fun, But it's a velvet underground song, right, yes, exactly,
it's actually every velvet underground song.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Let's se le's hear a little clip of that right now.
Speaker 5 (07:55):
And may.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
I think it feels sedate very much.
Speaker 5 (08:07):
Doesn't sound very exciting, you know, it doesn't sound like
you're jumping around.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
It doesn't sound from a purely melodic standpoint. It doesn't
sound worthy of a phrase with the gravity of trip
the light fantastic.
Speaker 5 (08:23):
Yeah, yeah, it sounds like something you'd hear in a
church basically, but in people's session.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Still love this phrase, right, this is not the last time,
This is not the last we've heard of tripping the light.
Speaker 5 (08:36):
No, no, it's not. In fact, so trip the light
fantastic in this song Sidewalks of New York was in
eighteen ninety four, and one of the first things I
noticed when I actually looked into this expression. As early
as nineteen oh eight, it was viewed as cliched or
a hackneyed phrase, which seemed to be a really oddly
(08:57):
specific year.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
That's when they had reached.
Speaker 5 (09:02):
Like yeah, yeah, ten years of it was too much. Sure,
not the Gilded Age anymore. We got to move on.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
People are avoiding ballroom dancers because they don't want to
hear that phrase again exactly.
Speaker 5 (09:14):
My boss told me trip the Light fantastic, Dick. It
was kind of gone for a little while, and then
in the early nineteen hundred, specifically around nineteen ten through
nineteen twenty nine, there was a lot of migrant Mexican
workers coming over. There was the Mexican Civil war going on,
(09:36):
there was a lot of political unrest and economic instability,
and so there was a lot of northward movement. In fact,
like a tenth of Mexico's population left during that time,
and so they kind of brought their culture and their
language and their music and food and all the things
that make life fun. And eventually fantastics started to get
(09:58):
subbed out with fandom, which is a Spanish dance. That's
to me, like, when I read the description of a fandango,
it was really similar to flamenco in my mind. And
it turns out that the fandango is just a specific
type of flamenco, you know, So there's you know, regional
(10:20):
specific types of flamenco.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Flamenco being you would be accompanied by a classical guitar
and castanette and green the dancer actually plays the castanet
at times.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (10:33):
The video Boy with a Coin by Iron and Wine
has a really.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
Cool example of that, right I remember that one.
Speaker 5 (10:39):
Now another change happened with this expression with Tennessee Williams
play The Glass Menagerie and in the opening monologue, as
Tom spoke to his father quote he gave up his
job with a telephone company and skipped the light fantastic
out of town.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
Whoa, So there's I think, yes, yea.
Speaker 5 (11:01):
By this time, like the sense of tripped that we
were talking about earlier as being nimble and agile kind
of like treaded into archaic territory and yeah, and.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
It became lame.
Speaker 5 (11:15):
Yes it want to lay Yeah, yeah, totally. And skipped
is phonetically similar and it has, you know, pretty much
the same spirit and meaning as as the former tripped
did so and skipped is kind of doing double duty
meaning wise because of skipping town.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
Okay, so here's the thing for me, the original trip
it kind of starts to come back around too with
the sixties and like the whole idea of it becoming
more of a trippy thing. Not to mention like you
had Queen talking about Scarmoose, Scar Moush, will you do
the fandango and all the thunder lightning. It's very very
frightening to me apparently. And then you've got this band
(11:59):
pro call Haram exactly. Yes, it's in nineteen sixty seven
and they have the song I kind of like the
any Lenox version better if I'm being honest, But it's
called a wider shade of pale.
Speaker 6 (12:10):
Uh, this is what I was waiting for. Yeah, lyrics
by Keith read Lyrics by Keith Read Say, and it
uses the more modernized version. I guess, well, relatively speaking,
we trip the light fandango, Oh no, skip light.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (12:26):
So it's almost like unrecognizable from its form of trip
the light fantastic, rip.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
The light fantastic, to skip the light fandango. My thing
here to all of this, the question I have is
what light?
Speaker 3 (12:37):
What is this light?
Speaker 4 (12:39):
Because originally, when we were talking about this affair, when
I'm thinking about the lights and I'm thinking about treading
the boards on a stage, the foot lights or something,
but that is not really something that comes around and
you sent any of the etymology that we that you
were looking into this exactly. But it's a very visual
thing and there's actually the uh l legro that you meant.
(13:00):
It was actually set to music by George Frederick Handel,
who was a you know, famous composer from the born
in the late sixteen hundred, has died in seventy to
fifty nine. And my mom, who is a singing teacher,
this is a song that a lot of her students
do and The lyric is, you know, common trip it
as you go, what.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
The light, fantastic toe or whatever like that.
Speaker 4 (13:22):
I always thought it was the fantastic glow, but now
I'm realizing that it's toe.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Fantastic toe is for some reason more appealing. So you're
leading with that fantastic toe and it's it's nice. It's
a nice switch to a spot twist. You know. Also, this,
this reminds me. This would be a fantastic phrase for
parkour if you are someone who is a parkour enthusiast
and you need to for some reason spice up your
get together, hardore parker, hardcore parkoer. Skip the light, fantastic,
(13:49):
trip the light, fantastic exactly, fantastic, skip the light.
Speaker 6 (13:54):
Maybe we should reinvent it yet again for a newer generation.
There we go, Yeah, tripping skippity the light glow, fantastic toe.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
How about flip it. Let's flip that light?
Speaker 6 (14:05):
Yeah, exactly, the whole new word, flip the light, Flip
the light, clip the light, fantastic, nip the light. We
could go on and send us your suggestions. Yes, please
to ridiculous these words that you know, the rhyme with
trip to.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Ridiculous at it's ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot com. We'd love
to hear from you, Frank.
Speaker 5 (14:25):
I am impressed, thank you, as I've really had no
idea that you know how much that had changed over time.
This is really fascinating how language is, you know, constantly
moving and changing, and it's almost unrecognizable.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
The sun speaking seamless, segues right, who's next? Who will
trip the light? Fantastic of idioms?
Speaker 3 (14:48):
I could go, yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
You've got some good ones, got it?
Speaker 3 (14:50):
Okay? Ones?
Speaker 4 (14:52):
I don't know if it's as cool sounding as a
trip in the light. Fantastic That is a nice kind
of compound idiom mine are also are both single words.
The first one I don't know. Let's see what should
I do? I know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna
do dope. Ah, yes, yes, I'm gonna do some dope.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
On the show we Know, we talked about this off air, right,
We talked about this for a while off air. We
did about which words take up the mantle of describing
something good or cool, cool, og right.
Speaker 4 (15:23):
And also how it's sort of like a trendy thing
to use a word that inherently means something negative and
then flip it around and use it to describe something good.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
And dope is a really good example of that.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
But it actually has way more history than I ever
would have possibly given it credit for. So here let's
see where does our journey of dopeness begin.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
The first one I always think of is like being
a dope.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Well, that's see, and that doesn't even enter into this
at all.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Really.
Speaker 4 (15:51):
No, it's certainly a use of the word, and you'll
see why it was used that way, but that's not
really the direction that my that my research took me. Originally,
dope was a word that was used to describe some
kind of like a dipping sauce.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
Okay, so sort.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
Of like like you know, let's just say a honey muster,
but more like a gravy type dipping sauce.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
And it was a Dutch word.
Speaker 4 (16:16):
The origin being the word doupe, which is kind of
fun because you think, I don't know, I'm just speculating here.
You know, if you doupe somebody, you make a dope
out of them, right, So doupe was a thick, sticky
sauce or a gravy, and it became a part of
the English lexicon in the American colonies. Washington Irving, the
famous writer, what did you write, Ben, You're You're You're
(16:38):
a literature.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
Guy, Police Academy four that's the one.
Speaker 4 (16:41):
Famed screenwriter Washington Irving of the Police Academy movies fame.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
He also he also wrote the Legend of Sleepy.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
That's the guy old Ikoby Crane. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (16:52):
So Washington Irving introduced it an early example in his
satire called Salmon Gundy, which I have not read.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
Has anybody read Salmon Gundy?
Speaker 1 (17:03):
My different don't be fooled? Yeah, I read that, but
it was it's been many moons.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
Well, it was published in eighteen oh seven. So, and
this is where he described something called a felo dripping pan,
which is like a dough kind of like a I
don't know, like kind of like a baking situation. And
he used this term in this phrase quote love of
what the learned Dutch call doupe spelled doup, like soup
(17:31):
with a D. And then that is where dope started
to come into fruition as we know it today. And
it really started taking off, this idea of a syrupy,
goopy doopy dare we say substance in the smokable form
of opium that appeared in the New York City Rag Truth,
(17:53):
which is a great name for a newspaper, really instill
some confidence in the words printed therein. And it's talking
about opium fiends, dope heads, dope fiends as early as
eighteen eighty three. And here's a couple of quotes from
Truth and this comes from a fantastic article on visualthosaurus
dot com that talks about the history.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
Of dope doping, dopes, doop all of that stuff.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
Here is one from March sixth, eighteen eighty three. Interested,
but I love this word. Impecunious fiends receive therefore a
commission which immediately reverts to the proprietor of the opium
den in exchange for a pipe privilege and a shell
of dope.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Impetuous is a dressed up word meaning broke, That's right.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
And then they have another one here, which is my
favorite because it's got another phrase in it that I
would like to explore as well.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
Alexander was hitting the flute wow and rapidly getting to
the bottom of it of a quote hop toy of dope,
which is quote themed pattern for smoking a considerable quantity
of opium fiend pattern.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
That's that's great dope dope speak. The dope is cheap
and the joint keeper does not catchies. Bend C A
T E C H I S E. Catechise That makes sense.
What is that sort of like being reprimanded? Yes, really chastise,
catechise them as to whether or not they are minors.
Speaker 5 (19:22):
Oh so were they smoking dope joints like opium joints.
Speaker 4 (19:26):
You know, No, the joint, the joint keeper, as in
like theriet establishment. That's right, Yeah, the joint keeper, the
bar the barman a right, let's say. So that's fantastic.
So then we've got dope kind of making the transition
into being a verb that can have either a positive
or a negative connotation. So if you're doping something, you
(19:50):
are injecting it or imbuing it with some sort of
medicinal substance that can either have a positive or negative effect.
And it really started entering the lexicon of horse racing.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
Yes, because it came to mean inside info.
Speaker 4 (20:06):
Right, Well, we're gonna get there, absolutely, But it originally
was the way we think of with performance enhancing drugs.
You know, that is still a term that's used today
by the UH. It's a body that investigates and maintains
the standards of you know, testing athletes to make sure
they're not quote unquote doping. Anti doping laws is what
they call them that they enforce. But so originally with
(20:30):
it was not about athletes human athletes. It was about horses.
And it became such a you know thing, and they
would be uh. They could be injected with anything from
like whiskey injected, I might if inche to like a stimulant,
So you could, like you might dope someone else's horse
to like slip them a mickey hobble the horse exactly,
(20:51):
or you might you might you might inject or you know,
apply some sort of stimulant to your own horse so
it gives it a little edge. And then it became
so prevalent that when you knew, you knew about which
horses were being affected by what stuff. That became referred
to as the straight dope, the inside dope.
Speaker 5 (21:13):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Also that's the World Anti Doping Agency or WATA aha.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
I love a good acronym. So one last thing.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
It was originally used in drug parlance, I guess to
describe an opiate which would eventually be the most popular
or insidious version was heroin. So even when people are
suffering from heroin withdrawal or opiate withdrawal, they call it
getting dope sick.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
Right, that is a thing, and recently, more recently, it's
kind of almost exclusively used to refer to marijuana.
Speaker 4 (21:52):
Your dope, dope head. You know you're smoking dope, Right,
that's what your mom says. Right, it's sort of a
bit of a square thing to say these days. Right,
here's the thing, and looking into this, I found I'm
just gonna really quickly go through this. I found the
origins of four twenty.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Whoa nice laid honest.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Yeah. So there's an article in High Times magazine.
Speaker 4 (22:12):
Yeah, wow, it's true pots Brian plot twist about the
history of four twenty. So it turns out that there's
so many ideas about like what four to twenty was.
One of them was like, oh, there's four hundred and
twenty discrete distinct.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
Chemicals in marijuana. That seems like a stretch.
Speaker 4 (22:30):
Four twenty was supposedly like some kind of police radio
code for like dope smoking in action or whatever. Al, yeah,
we got a four twenty. Also not the case So
somebody reached out two High Times in the nineties early
nineties saying, now, no, no, none of this is true.
Me and my friends from.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
A high school. No, yeah, we know.
Speaker 4 (22:51):
Not only do we know, we invented it. Okay, So
and then we've got and I've got I've got proof.
So this guy reached out a guy by the name
of Brian Jarvins and who was a freelance writer for
High Times. He received this email or this correspondence from
a guy who was running a business in San Rafael, California,
which is very near San Francisco, and so he's like, okay,
(23:12):
I'm interested. The guy identified himself as Steve, Steve Waldo. Okay,
so he said, okay, me and my friends we referred
to ourselves as the Waldos, and we went to San
Rafael High School and we had a secret spot that
we were trying to find, a like a mission where
it was like going to be this patch of marijuana
(23:32):
was growing like someone had planted and they had to
like find it like Holy Grail style. And so they
agreed that one hour after school ended at four twenty,
they would meet and go on this sojourn to find
this marijuana field, it's so fascinating, and they interested, and
then they would meet by a statue of Louis Pasteur
at San Rafael High School, and they apparently.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Were known for their affinity for smoking the dope.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
The Marx Brothers in stand up comedy sounds like a
bunch of dangerous.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
High with never hang out with Steward would.
Speaker 6 (24:01):
Love it, You really would love That's fascinating, That so fascinating.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
That's Dope's very good, Ben, And it all started with Ben.
Your whole thing, like you know, using a negative to
describe a positive.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
Now it's something that the kids say when something is cool.
Speaker 6 (24:17):
It's interesting that it went from like such a harsh
drug as an opiate, to marijuana, which of course now
is more or less legal in most places or.
Speaker 4 (24:24):
Less, it is at least much more, much more universally
considered innocuous.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Exactly.
Speaker 5 (24:31):
Yeah, Yeah, I think dope is still kind of like,
you know, an opiate sort of word. It can be
a catch all, certainly specifically when you're talking about dope sickness.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
That's right, and this Coca Cola drugs. This leads us
to an important point and a question I think that
we were asking each other off the air when the
four of us were hanging out. Uh, how do we
get in front of this? What's the right now? Dope?
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Is encountering telling a moment?
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Yeah, it's having a moment, it's having a renaissance, right,
the same the cool did, wicked, sick, rad, gnarly, tubular, radical,
and the question that keeps haunting me. I mean, I
don't think we figured this out when we were talking
about this earlier. What's the next one? What's the next
word that's going to inherit this mantle? You know what
(25:17):
I mean? Like, what's the what's the next dope?
Speaker 3 (25:20):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
It's a one word?
Speaker 4 (25:22):
Probably it probably is. Is it possible that that our
friend Rowan Nuby has it?
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Sure?
Speaker 6 (25:27):
I'm honored that you would think that I have a
cornucopia of silly words just floating around on the bank
of my Why they brought me in here? Actually, okay,
let's just uh, let's just thrust some out there. What
about slut slunt slunt? Yeah, it's kind of kind of gross.
It's maybe it's like maybe it's like your mean, Maybe
(25:49):
someone is mean that's a.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Harsh mouthfield maybe like flong about like.
Speaker 6 (25:56):
Right, now, dude, last night I got really uh poddled.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
That's like that means too much? Yes, serious. I went
through a phase where, for some reason, and I never
apologized Casey to you or nol on air, so I
should do it now. I went through it. I get
stuck in certain phrases and I over use them very easily.
And I went through a period where I was just
(26:22):
instead of saying yes to something or great or I've
seen this email I was replying to I was replying
to you guys with just zanzibar because I like and
no one ever called me on you guys, never said, dude,
what are you talking about? Just let it roll?
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Really, you know, I mean, Ben's going to be Ben.
Speaker 6 (26:42):
If you're bold enough and you just yeah, gownly if
you own it.
Speaker 4 (26:46):
No one's gonna say anything that's the truth with any
of these words. And we've coined a few on the
show ourselves, like a straight Seahorse T shirt.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
Yeah, has been making the rounds with some of the
folks on the Ridiculous History page.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Yeah we actually we should, we should paying Some of
our fellow listener is rode In and it told us
that they were propagating this phrase, which we thought was fantastic.
I gotta admit, man, I don't know about you know
that I had no idea straight seahorse teeth would take off.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
You must have had a little inkling.
Speaker 5 (27:14):
Then the first day you hear that in the wild
is going to be amazing.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Wow. Do you think we will? You will? I hope so,
I hope it's in a really weird situation.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
What other situations do we find ourselves in in the wild?
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Then it's true we don't have regular days now, you
really don't.
Speaker 4 (27:29):
But we do have another idiom to throw out at you,
don't we. I think it's yours, my friend Rowan, That.
Speaker 6 (27:35):
Is correct, I do have one, since that is the
game we're playing here. How funny would it be if
I just was like, oh wait, I was supposed to
do homework. No, I just was sitting here drinking coconut water.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
What do I have here? Cucumber was a.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
Cucumber montane sparkling water, made right here in the heart
of Atlanta, Georgia.
Speaker 6 (27:56):
Is it true that if we say the company name
of the product too more times they'll send us a
case of it?
Speaker 3 (28:01):
We already have cases. Yeah, we're office one okay, oh
you take with you.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Take them with you. You guys are take away from
the fun of getting free things. But okay, do you
want us to like make it a scavenger hunt or
like make it more fun? Sure? Okay, Well we'll give
you a series of clues at the end of the episode.
Do I see them a little off to that? Seem
all right? I'm a little I drank a lot last night.
Well you know, I'm not a hangover doctor or whatever.
(28:30):
But you seem fine. What do you think, guys? Does
he seem alright?
Speaker 5 (28:33):
You look great?
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Yeah, he looks like you're absolutely glowing.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Okay, Well, good that that shower helped.
Speaker 6 (28:38):
Uh Well, the reason I ask is because, uh, you know,
we've all knocked back a few in our local watering
hole and woke up feeling rather ripe, which is called
the local, which is called we might as well say, yeah,
it's it's it really is on the nose. Yeah, you
can be pretty gnarly if you drink too much, which
brings up my first idiom here the time honored colloquialism
hair of the dog, which is a yes, which is
(29:02):
a short for, of course, hair of the dog that
bit you.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
So because this one. I I have no idea what
the etymology is, but I've heard it used again in
the wild, sure, And it's usually when someone starts drinking
kind of early in the day, you know, not distressingly early,
not like airport, but yeah, like brunch early.
Speaker 6 (29:22):
Yeah, sure, and I mean it's it's You can also
infer from the way where it's used in normal conversation
that it's to quell the aching headache from the night before.
You wake up with a headache because you're hungover, and
so you're like, oh, hair the dog, the bitch you.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
I'm just gonna keep drinking.
Speaker 6 (29:38):
That'll solve everything if I just keep drinking. Right in
question Mark, I hear the dog Lloyd, Yeah, exact, of course.
I always think of the shining too. Yeah, and it's
referring to the it's a it's a cure like finger
quotes cure.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
There's no scientific proof that it works whatsoever, but the.
Speaker 6 (29:53):
Story goes, yeah, if you indulge too much, the next day,
you ingest more of the same alcohol and it quells this.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Pain in your head.
Speaker 6 (30:00):
But at the origin of the expression dates back to
medieval times actually, when it was thought that after being
bit by a rabid dog. One could relieve the pain
by simply rubbing some hairs from the same dog into
your wound.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
Okay, first of all, that's disgusting. That seems very unsane.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
No, No, I'm not a doctor. I don't recommend them.
Speaker 4 (30:20):
I mean it is something that we've talked about in
other episodes of the show. This sort of like I
don't know, you hear about it in medieval practitioners of remedies.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
You know, I'm not even gonna call them doctor. That
wasn't quite even a thing yet, but it's seemed like
leeching or blood letting, only this is like almost like
the idea of fighting fire with fire, right.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Yeah, sympathetic magic. This theory was first developed by a
guy named Sir James Frasier in his masterpiece The Golden Boat.
And in this the argument is that like can cure
like this correlation between things, whether they're related through their
(30:59):
physicality or whether they're related through their space and time
in the event.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
Right, like a voodoo doll or something.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Sure, yeah, or like how you could become a werewolf
by drinking water from a wolf print in the woods,
which is also, by the way, not true. If you
were about to give it a go. I don't think
it'll work, but right in if it does once you
transform back. But you're absolutely right. Well, it's kind of
the idea that the poison can help create the antidote.
Speaker 6 (31:29):
Yeah, you guys always enlightened me on my own idioms
that I bring to the table.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
I love the What did you call what kind of magic?
Was that? Sympathetic eathetic magic?
Speaker 4 (31:37):
Yeah, it's sort of like a sympathetic vibration, right, So
it's if something vibrates at the right frequency, it makes
it something else vibrate at that same frequency. So sympathetic
magic would be like if you are interacting with something
related to the malady that you're suffering from or maybe
even dare we say the cause, that it will somehow
cure it.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
But what you're getting at Rong, which.
Speaker 4 (31:58):
I totally agree with, is that this is completely magical thinking.
It's this idea that I to be less drunk or
to feel less bad, I should just drink more and
sure it'll make you.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
Feel a little better because you're drunk again.
Speaker 6 (32:11):
It's also it's alsobies right and also, how do you
get the subsequent hairs from the same dog that bit you.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
I feel like reas that's right.
Speaker 4 (32:25):
It requires some sort of mystical quest because that here, okay,
here we go. I propose something, this idea of seeking
out some sort of creature that has wronged you and
then you have to kill it to get the hair.
That's sort of the idea is you gotta you gotta
slay the beast and then you get the hair, rub
it on your wounds. But let's apply this to you
(32:46):
know how the idiom came around to bar times.
Speaker 6 (32:49):
I guess, like, who doesn't like a good mimosa or
bloody Mary in the morning. Let's be honest, you know,
I was just a little nip and morning guy.
Speaker 4 (32:58):
I just recently started liking blady. But I was shocked
out at the airport at like six am this morning.
I'm looking in the.
Speaker 3 (33:04):
People are pouring vodka and the airport bar at six
that had to be some hair the alcohol thing.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Well, they're also they're also possibly, in their defense, they're
coming from a very different time zone. Could be we
do have the world's busiest airport. Oh okay, well never mind,
no no, no, no, no, no, you never know. But well
I've decided to assume that's fair.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
I was a little shocked, and you know, even weirder,
I was like, maybe I should I should have a
little nippet six in the morning.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
That seems fun.
Speaker 6 (33:32):
You know, if I see someone drinking that much at
an airport, I go they fly all of the time.
They are getting on airplanes like four times a week
or something.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
Because the thing about airports is that's sort of like
a liminal space where it's like a space between spaces,
and so the normal rules of decorum and life skills
do not apply when you're at the air absolutely true.
Speaker 5 (33:53):
Like garbage.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
What happens in the airport?
Speaker 3 (33:56):
Pants, sweatpants and pocket shots, crocs, trip that light, fantastic.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
We have some airport war stories that would be great
for a future episode. What do you think that's diving
into our personal lives a little? I'm fine with you, okay,
but I have a question for you. Real sure, Okay.
This is illuminating to me and I cannot help. But
wonder what kind of terrible night someone had where they
went on this quest. As Noel said, they were bitten
(34:23):
by a rabid dog. They hunted it down, they took
its hair, and then in the morning they started drinking
booze and someone's like, whoa, hey, dude, are you okay? Like,
how bad does your now? Bad does not have to
be right exactly.
Speaker 6 (34:39):
I mean alcohol will always act, as you know, a
numbing agent. I feel like, I mean, for God's sake.
Then they used to put whiskey and milk and give
it to their kids. You know, I still do that,
just random children.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
Oh okay, you.
Speaker 4 (34:55):
Know, I actually found a really good physiological description of
it on a website called vinepaar dot com, which is
a great name for a website.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Yeah, this is a great name. I actually have the
same source. What did you find I found?
Speaker 3 (35:09):
You know?
Speaker 6 (35:09):
Yeah, I was talking about these physiological aspects of like
how you know the alcohol affects you like bloody Mary
works because the alcohol inside the drink begins acting on
the chemical receptors inside the brain to increase the feelings
of pleasure. It's actually why so many people like booze
in the first place, and also probably why you drank
so much the night before, and the chemical reaction begins
to overpower the hangover symptoms, thus allowing us to feel
(35:31):
at least momentarily from the bad decisions of the previous night.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
So and what is life but a series of momentary reliefs? Yeah,
and quick fixes.
Speaker 5 (35:40):
You know, have any of y'all ever had Hair of
the Dog actually cure your hangover, because that's always been
like a delay strategy for me. Like when I've worked
in a restaurant, I was like, let me just get
through the lunch rush, right like in d stem spinach
for the next three hours and then go home.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
I've Yeah, I'm not a practitioner of Hair of the Dog,
even when I live in a crazy airport life. It
just seems strange to introduce that kind of variable after,
you know, especially if you've had a night where you
were drinking and you wake up the next day like
maybe you can, maybe you can power through, as you said, Frank,
(36:15):
delay until about three pm or something. At some point
your body has.
Speaker 6 (36:19):
Some metabolize this alcohol, like unless you just steadily drink
from that point to the rest of your.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
Life, which is really increasingly shorter. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (36:28):
No, it really does seem like prolonging the inevitable. I
am incapable of day drinking successfully too. I know that
Frank that you have, You're not That's not our thing.
It's just like because I get sleepy, I get cranky.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
It's not fun. It just is going to kill my day.
Speaker 4 (36:42):
I don't care what kind of night I've had the
night before. I'm just going to power through. And we
have some very helpful tips for this. All of a sudden,
this has become alcoholism.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
One on one, just drink a lot of water.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Drink a lot.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
That has always cured my headache. If I just drink
a lot of water. I don't want to drink booze.
I wanted to water hydrated kids. And you know, a
little bit of a little bit of a leave, a
little bit of ibuprofen and something, eat something.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Yeah, you drink. Be married, No, don't be married.
Speaker 3 (37:12):
Feel sad, be ashamed of yourself because if you're a
garbage person and you don't deserve.
Speaker 5 (37:17):
To be happy, you should never drink again.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
And you should you should make wildly melodramatic proclamations all
that to everyone.
Speaker 5 (37:26):
You know on social media.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
People you don't. Yeah.
Speaker 6 (37:34):
So I found this phrase from this old English writer
named John Heywood on phrases dot Org that supposedly the
first origin of Hair of the Dog fifteen forty six.
I thought it was really interesting.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
Are you going to read it. I am going to
read it. Will you do a voice? I one, We'll
do all right. I'm in.
Speaker 6 (37:51):
I pray they let me and my fellow have a
hair of the dog that bit us last night and
bitten were we both on the brain?
Speaker 1 (38:00):
It literally says that we saw each other drunk and
the good ale glass.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
Bit on the brain. So what you're saying is I
think we were talking off Mike, how both to the brain?
Both to the brain. That's great.
Speaker 4 (38:18):
So you were telling me a little bit off, Mike
that this article talks about how some of these phrases
don't really come into popular use until like the literal
version of it sort of falls out. So this is
sort of what you're seeing. There is this gentleman using
that to describe the actual experience of being hungover, and
exactly he's kind of using it as a metaphor when
(38:41):
it was sort of a folkloric tradition in the first place,
right exactly.
Speaker 6 (38:45):
It's interesting, yeah, super fascinating, and.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
We still use it to this day.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Something. So we've got dope, hair of the dog and
tripping the light. Fantastic. I'm glad that we set this
up as a two part in the beginning this This
is one of those shows that I wish wouldn't end,
but we will have to end today's episode eventually. I
have I have one contribution. I feel like the uh,
(39:13):
the evil character and a fairy tale going. I have
a presence from a child. There's one more gift. This
phrase is something that we've heard before, and I primed
you guys just a little bit off air for this.
The word is god Zukes, and so that's why I
was like sliding that in hot topic mall gad Zukes
(39:34):
Spencer's uh. For a lot of us in our age
group in this part of the world, when we hear
the phrase godzooks, we associate it with the store that
used to be quite popular in the era of malls,
and it was called Goadzukes.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
Are we in a post mall America?
Speaker 6 (39:51):
Yes, it's getting I guess that's because the mall used
to be like a central like fixture of like hanging
out hangout center.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
It was the center of town.
Speaker 4 (40:01):
God Zukes was also like where you would buy those
giant pants that were called Jinko's. Younger listeners and maybe
don't remember this absurd time or.
Speaker 6 (40:09):
That orb with the lightning. Ooh, the glass that would
touch or the pill you put your hand and it
showed its your hand in the metal.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
Which those things have to be filthy by now, yeah,
the ones on display and like the science store face.
So it turns out that god zeukes actually has a
storied history, you know, things like goad zukes or zounds,
(40:40):
which is also related on the yep uh. They sound
like something you would hear on the old Adam West.
Yeah scooby doo, the old Adam West batman, but they
have religious origins. Dictionary references date gad zookes as far
back as the late sixteen hundreds as a shortening of
another exclamation, which was by God's hooks. Whoa God's hooks
(41:05):
be a reference to the nails on the cross of
Jesus Christ.
Speaker 4 (41:10):
You know what first popped into my head when you
said God's hooks? I pictured God as being like pinhead
from hell razors shutting out hooks into the flesh of
a damn.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
I I was thinking that too, like a god with
you know that has an unseeable form except for the
hooks where the hands should be. You know this this
super pirate yeh, super pirate this weird because I mentioned
zounds earlier. Zounds also appears to date back to around
the fifteen hundreds as a euphemism for the phrase by
(41:40):
God's wounds.
Speaker 4 (41:42):
So it should be pronounced zoons should probably should be
z O U N D S right.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
And I guess it depends on yourselves, right, So this
phrase god zooks is not alone in its evolution, even
phrases there's somewhat innocuous, like Jeeper's creepy. It was originally
euphemism to get around saying Jesus Christ, but still still
have the same thing. I think the guy who meets yeah,
(42:08):
I think the guy who made the film Jeepers Creepers
doesn't know that. But also apparently that guy's a creep
I've heard. Yeah, I'm a big fan of JEsum crow.
That's that's good. I'm a big fan of cheese and crackers.
Good people say that, right, Oh for sure? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (42:23):
Children, I said that earlier, Yes, yeah, right.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
Or just the strangers on the train. So it's an exclamation.
We don't hear it too often now. I think Prince
Philip said it in These are modern days, but it
would be unusual for us to be hanging out and
maybe have a surprise party for Casey and for him
to see the cake and whatever, you know, Mariachi band
(42:49):
or whatever we had to spice it up. It would
be really strange for him to go Dad Zooks, wouldn't
it well.
Speaker 4 (42:55):
I mean, you know, these hip young millennials these days,
they bring back this stuff all the time, saying ironically,
you know, yeah, I say, Zoike's a lot.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
That's true. That's true. I started saying oish and I
have no idea why. It's just stutched in my head.
I think I just made it up so like, I
don't know. I was just so surprised that's what came out.
And it's like, I'll keep that one. But the use
of gad for God occurs in other phrases too, gad
gad and these are called phraseological combinations. There are other
(43:29):
ones that didn't make the cut. God zekes is did
that Coca Cola reference earlier? Goad Zukes is one of
the most successful of these turns of phrase. I would like, yeah,
I'd like to end this part of the show by
telling introducing you guys to some God Zukes esque things
that didn't make it. They're all ridiculous. Are you prepared?
Speaker 3 (43:55):
All right?
Speaker 1 (43:56):
Gad's Bob's also an exclamation, Gad's bob, Uh, God's lid.
There's God's bud likings.
Speaker 3 (44:09):
Can we bring that back?
Speaker 1 (44:11):
God's buddly goods? And then God's nouns nouns in u
n s. That's just lazy. I mean, I think the
clear audience favorite here is God's bud likings.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
It's bud bud lickings.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Bud.
Speaker 3 (44:30):
That would be a good name for a Dukes of
Hazard character.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
Budd. Oh gosh, So this is strange. Gods, Gods buds likings.
We found out about tripping the light fantastic the hair
of the dog that bid us and it was overall
pretty dopey.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
Thanks man, sounds just a little bit.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
I deserved it.
Speaker 3 (44:55):
I opened them wide and affection and admiration from my
dear co host Bimbol.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
Thank you, Noel Brown. And likewise, one thing that we
found there was a great interest to us on our
first episode of Idiomatic for the People was that, in
the course of the show, we had totally without planning
it used several, like multiple different turns of phrase or
figures of speech idioms that we did not even notice
(45:23):
until we went back and listened to it. So I
wonder if we did that today as well, No doubt
about it, no doubt about it.
Speaker 5 (45:32):
That's there's a really cool video by Kishi Bashi who
crams like one hundred and twenty or so idioms into
a single music video. That's really cool.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
Well, we got four.
Speaker 3 (45:47):
We're doing our best. We're living our best life.
Speaker 6 (45:49):
I know, Kishi Bashi, bud we're working our way.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
I'll do it. But who is not even him sometimes?
Speaker 3 (45:55):
But he is from Mathews, Georgia, which is also where
Arim is from, which is one of Frank's favorite which
is where Idiomatic for the people came from. So thanks R. E. M.
Speaker 4 (46:04):
And thanks Frank Mulharan for helping dub this segment.
Speaker 1 (46:08):
All right, thank you, and thanks.
Speaker 3 (46:10):
For coming on the show. Dude, Thanks for having me. Rob,
Thanks to you as well. My pleasure.
Speaker 4 (46:16):
You you you, you dashing man with your He's got
a shirt on that you guys wouldn't believe.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
It's got boots on it.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
It's very colorful. I wanted to take a picture, but
I didn't want to look weird. Oh no, it's fine.
Everyone takes pictures of everything these days.
Speaker 6 (46:29):
All right, Well, that that which man is wearing Google
glasses right now. We keep telling them they're out of fashion,
They're no longer even function.
Speaker 4 (46:39):
He keeps saying, Okay, Google, take a picture of shirts Google.
Speaker 1 (46:46):
All right, Well, you guys busted me. They are apparently
not as inconspicuous as I thought. But yes, thank you
so much for coming on the show. If you would
like to hear more from our good friend Frank the Taint,
more hair and fear not, because you're essentially a shadow
member of our podcast, like we run ideas past Frank yep,
(47:10):
and Frank will sometimes give us ideas and we just
try not to disappoint.
Speaker 4 (47:13):
I mean, I'm a little worried that having his actual
voice on the show is going to open up some
sort of rift and time space.
Speaker 3 (47:18):
But I'm willing to take chance, godless hope not.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
If you want to. If you want to hear more
from our good friend Rowan Newby, check out his podcast Pitches.
What is pitches?
Speaker 6 (47:30):
Pitches is a podcast a boad ideas. It is a
comedy podcast, and boy, oh boy, I would love it
if any of these fellow listeners would like to ride
in any ideas I mean really, it can be an
app a turn of phrase. How about that, It could
be a you know, an invention or who knows, and
Nolan goes on, you were on a great episode.
Speaker 1 (47:51):
Of that's correct.
Speaker 3 (47:52):
Yeah, I think it's coming out soon.
Speaker 4 (47:54):
It's out today, out today, so well, this would be
a little removed from that in time, so it already
exists in the world.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (48:01):
I pitched a really silly idea for a suntann lotion
that gets you drunk.
Speaker 6 (48:07):
Ah, the old hair of the tan that tanned you.
Speaker 1 (48:11):
Right. Oh, that was very good.
Speaker 3 (48:14):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 4 (48:15):
I think we've got a future episode coming up where
Ben is going to.
Speaker 1 (48:19):
Correctly, that's in the that's in the cards tune.
Speaker 6 (48:23):
If you want to find us on the instagrams, you
know what to do at Pitches Podcast Baby shameless plug.
Speaker 1 (48:30):
Oh, we're far past the point of shame for plugs.
Speaking of plugs, you can find us and your fellow
listeners on our Facebook page Ridiculous Historians. We're also all
over Twitter and Instagram. We've even started sharing our own
personal adventures. Is that right?
Speaker 3 (48:48):
No, that's right. I am at Embryonic Insider.
Speaker 1 (48:50):
And I am at Ben Bolan We hope that you
enjoy this episode. We hope you tune in for the
next one as idiomatic. For the people soldiers on Frank,
I cannot emphasize it enough. We're huge fans of that name.
Thank you. We're thanking you profusely because we're I think
legally we're we're we don't have to pay you.
Speaker 3 (49:12):
It's fine what we do. We're also profuse thankers just
in general, that's true.
Speaker 4 (49:16):
Thank you, Ben, and thank you super producer Kasey Pegrim.
Thank you Alex Williams, a composer our theme. Thank you Gabe,
our research associate who had absolutely nothing to.
Speaker 3 (49:26):
Do with this episode today, but we still thank him
just the same. He's a great realmnch. And thanks to
you Benbowan for being such a dashing and debonair co hosts.
And that jacket and those Google glasses are really popping today.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
You know what, I've committed to the bit.
Speaker 3 (49:41):
That's what you gotta do. We'll see you next timebox.
Speaker 4 (49:47):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Fellow Ridiculous Historians, we are returning to you with a classic,
a series of classics, actually, so stay tuned. This is
one that we immensely enjoyed and Noel, if you recall,
we broked in some friends for this, we did.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
It's another example of what we intended to be an
ongoing series in the early days of the show, and
we only did twice. We had the best of intentions,
and now that I'm remembering what a good time we
had with friends of the show, Frank mulhern and Rowan Newby,
I think we gotta do this again. Idiomatic for the
(00:39):
People This idea of each guest. We could do a
guest list if needed, bring a word and just trace
the origins of it. We love etymology and history of words,
and its bonkers to me that we have not revisited this.
It's also a really clever name and a reference to
hometown heroes are em.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
We must let's roll the tape. This is from twenty
nineteen Idiomatic for the People two, Part one. Ridiculous History
is a production of iHeartRadio. So recently, my co host
(01:39):
Nol and I had an idea that we thought was
just crazy enough to work we had started talking about
all the strange things that happen in the English language.
There's so many sayings that don't quite translate, or if
you heard them in another language, you would say, what
the heck are these people talking about. We thought this
(02:02):
was so fascinating that we wanted to do an episode
on it, and luckily we got green lit by our
super producer, Casey Pegram.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
Nothing goes out without his express approval. Yes, yes, very true.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
He is. He is a king maker here. So you know,
you and I, oh, and I'm Ben by the way.
You and I wanted to do an episode about idioms,
and we didn't want to go into this for a alone,
so we were joined with our good friend and host
of the podcast Pitches Rowan Newby.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Hey, oh here he is.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Oh, there he is.
Speaker 4 (02:36):
He's been here the whole time. He was sitting in
when we were talking about the Statue of Liberty. Uh,
and now we're finally giving him voice.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
We did. We turned on this.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
It's true. But hey, here's the thing. You might remember.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
When we first did this episode, we gave it a
fantastic name. Idiomatic for the people that I mentioned was
coined by a ephemeral friend of the show who you've
heard mentioned plenty of times, multiple times, multiple times, My
dear friend and cohort, Frank the Tank Mulheran.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Hey, guys, Frank joined us today.
Speaker 4 (03:13):
Human he is in the flesh, he has a voice,
he has a soul, and he has some ideas about
some weird idioms. So it's all it's all coming together,
you guys, We're all here.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
We finally did it. We pulled it off, and I
have a feeling that this will be a two parter. No,
to be completely clear with everybody listening this time, we
do know roughly what our friends are going to be presenting, right,
but I think it's safe to say in most cases
we don't know the stories behind these phrases or these words.
(03:46):
So we're experiencing this with you as you listen.
Speaker 4 (03:49):
Yeah, I mean, with four you know, dashingly good looking
and intelligent gentlemen, we did not want to run the
risk of doubling up, so we did give ourselves at
least that luxury of knowing what.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
The other we're gonna do.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
But no, we only researched our own, So there's gonna
be surprises of plenty in today's episode.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Yep, you've paid for the whole seat, but you only
use the eggs.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
You should pay for any.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Well, they paid attention. That's true.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
You always say that time is the most valuable currency
these days, and that has never been more true than
it is today.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
So what do you say, gents who would like to
who would like to kick us off? I'm just gonna
I'm just gonna count down from three and then pixelm oh,
that's like a dad moved.
Speaker 5 (04:33):
I know that's three two?
Speaker 3 (04:38):
All right? What do you got, Frank?
Speaker 5 (04:40):
All right? So recently I went back to my hometown
to visit my parents for their birthdays. They both have
birthdays within three days of each other. Here sweet, super
convenient since I live out of town. So we were
hanging out and we did dinner and drinks and and
gifts exchanges and all that stuff. And then I decided
(05:04):
I was going to go out and hang out with
some of my friends in Augusta, Georgia, where I'm from.
And on my way out, my mom said, y'all have fun,
be safe, and then my dad chimed in with trip
the light fantastic and yeah, no, I'd never heard.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
I've heard this freeze before but massive points to your dad,
what gravitas? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5 (05:32):
And the thing is he had no idea where it
came from, and I asked him about it. Yeah, and we, like,
you know, guessed wildly for a few minutes, despite the
fact that we all have working smartphones. So I left.
It was still a mystery to me, and then I
looked it up later on the next day, and there's
(05:52):
quite a story to it. It goes through several different
iterations and alterations give it to us. So the phrase
itself means to dance nimbly or lightly and move to
a pattern of musical accompaniment. The first variation of it
(06:12):
is found in John Milton's Allegro, and the line is
come and trip it as you go on the light
fantastic toe.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Ah, the old fantastic toe.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Yes, yes, so sing song a lot.
Speaker 5 (06:27):
It really is. And the thing that kind of tripped
me up was in this sense, trip isn't the sort
of normal definition that we think of when it comes
to your feet and moving around. It's more about being nimble,
flit light fleet footage, yes, yes, kind of right, frolicking
or whatever. And so you're in a ballroom and you're
(06:49):
you know, waltzing around the room and and it's just
kind of about you know, enjoying the night and kind
of like living the bonvvant life, and fantastic kind of
means with flair basically, So it's an escalation, yeah, expressivity basically,
And that was kind of like the version that was
(07:11):
around it was just basically John Milton thing. So the
condensed version of the line from Milton appeared in Sidewalks
of New York by Charles B. Lawler and James W.
Blake in eighteen ninety four, and the line is boys
and Girls Together, Me and Mamey o' rourke trip the
(07:32):
light Fantastic on the Sidewalks of New York. The song
is pretty dull. You would think a song by the
name of Sidewalks of New York might be kind.
Speaker 6 (07:42):
Of fun, But it's a velvet underground song, right, yes, exactly,
it's actually every velvet underground song.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Let's se le's hear a little clip of that right now.
Speaker 5 (07:55):
And may.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
I think it feels sedate very much.
Speaker 5 (08:07):
Doesn't sound very exciting, you know, it doesn't sound like
you're jumping around.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
It doesn't sound from a purely melodic standpoint. It doesn't
sound worthy of a phrase with the gravity of trip
the light fantastic.
Speaker 5 (08:23):
Yeah, yeah, it sounds like something you'd hear in a
church basically, but in people's session.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Still love this phrase, right, this is not the last time,
This is not the last we've heard of tripping the light.
Speaker 5 (08:36):
No, no, it's not. In fact, so trip the light
fantastic in this song Sidewalks of New York was in
eighteen ninety four, and one of the first things I
noticed when I actually looked into this expression. As early
as nineteen oh eight, it was viewed as cliched or
a hackneyed phrase, which seemed to be a really oddly
(08:57):
specific year.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
That's when they had reached.
Speaker 5 (09:02):
Like yeah, yeah, ten years of it was too much. Sure,
not the Gilded Age anymore. We got to move on.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
People are avoiding ballroom dancers because they don't want to
hear that phrase again exactly.
Speaker 5 (09:14):
My boss told me trip the Light fantastic, Dick. It
was kind of gone for a little while, and then
in the early nineteen hundred, specifically around nineteen ten through
nineteen twenty nine, there was a lot of migrant Mexican
workers coming over. There was the Mexican Civil war going on,
(09:36):
there was a lot of political unrest and economic instability,
and so there was a lot of northward movement. In fact,
like a tenth of Mexico's population left during that time,
and so they kind of brought their culture and their
language and their music and food and all the things
that make life fun. And eventually fantastics started to get
(09:58):
subbed out with fandom, which is a Spanish dance. That's
to me, like, when I read the description of a fandango,
it was really similar to flamenco in my mind. And
it turns out that the fandango is just a specific
type of flamenco, you know, So there's you know, regional
(10:20):
specific types of flamenco.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Flamenco being you would be accompanied by a classical guitar
and castanette and green the dancer actually plays the castanet
at times.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (10:33):
The video Boy with a Coin by Iron and Wine
has a really.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
Cool example of that, right I remember that one.
Speaker 5 (10:39):
Now another change happened with this expression with Tennessee Williams
play The Glass Menagerie and in the opening monologue, as
Tom spoke to his father quote he gave up his
job with a telephone company and skipped the light fantastic
out of town.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
Whoa, So there's I think, yes, yea.
Speaker 5 (11:01):
By this time, like the sense of tripped that we
were talking about earlier as being nimble and agile kind
of like treaded into archaic territory and yeah, and.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
It became lame.
Speaker 5 (11:15):
Yes it want to lay Yeah, yeah, totally. And skipped
is phonetically similar and it has, you know, pretty much
the same spirit and meaning as as the former tripped
did so and skipped is kind of doing double duty
meaning wise because of skipping town.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
Okay, so here's the thing for me, the original trip
it kind of starts to come back around too with
the sixties and like the whole idea of it becoming
more of a trippy thing. Not to mention like you
had Queen talking about Scarmoose, Scar Moush, will you do
the fandango and all the thunder lightning. It's very very
frightening to me apparently. And then you've got this band
(11:59):
pro call Haram exactly. Yes, it's in nineteen sixty seven
and they have the song I kind of like the
any Lenox version better if I'm being honest, But it's
called a wider shade of pale.
Speaker 6 (12:10):
Uh, this is what I was waiting for. Yeah, lyrics
by Keith read Lyrics by Keith Read Say, and it
uses the more modernized version. I guess, well, relatively speaking,
we trip the light fandango, Oh no, skip light.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (12:26):
So it's almost like unrecognizable from its form of trip
the light fantastic, rip.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
The light fantastic, to skip the light fandango. My thing
here to all of this, the question I have is
what light?
Speaker 3 (12:37):
What is this light?
Speaker 4 (12:39):
Because originally, when we were talking about this affair, when
I'm thinking about the lights and I'm thinking about treading
the boards on a stage, the foot lights or something,
but that is not really something that comes around and
you sent any of the etymology that we that you
were looking into this exactly. But it's a very visual
thing and there's actually the uh l legro that you meant.
(13:00):
It was actually set to music by George Frederick Handel,
who was a you know, famous composer from the born
in the late sixteen hundred, has died in seventy to
fifty nine. And my mom, who is a singing teacher,
this is a song that a lot of her students
do and The lyric is, you know, common trip it
as you go, what.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
The light, fantastic toe or whatever like that.
Speaker 4 (13:22):
I always thought it was the fantastic glow, but now
I'm realizing that it's toe.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Fantastic toe is for some reason more appealing. So you're
leading with that fantastic toe and it's it's nice. It's
a nice switch to a spot twist. You know. Also, this,
this reminds me. This would be a fantastic phrase for
parkour if you are someone who is a parkour enthusiast
and you need to for some reason spice up your
get together, hardore parker, hardcore parkoer. Skip the light, fantastic,
(13:49):
trip the light, fantastic exactly, fantastic, skip the light.
Speaker 6 (13:54):
Maybe we should reinvent it yet again for a newer generation.
There we go, Yeah, tripping skippity the light glow, fantastic toe.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
How about flip it. Let's flip that light?
Speaker 6 (14:05):
Yeah, exactly, the whole new word, flip the light, Flip
the light, clip the light, fantastic, nip the light. We
could go on and send us your suggestions. Yes, please
to ridiculous these words that you know, the rhyme with
trip to.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Ridiculous at it's ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot com. We'd love
to hear from you, Frank.
Speaker 5 (14:25):
I am impressed, thank you, as I've really had no
idea that you know how much that had changed over time.
This is really fascinating how language is, you know, constantly
moving and changing, and it's almost unrecognizable.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
The sun speaking seamless, segues right, who's next? Who will
trip the light? Fantastic of idioms?
Speaker 3 (14:48):
I could go, yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
You've got some good ones, got it?
Speaker 3 (14:50):
Okay? Ones?
Speaker 4 (14:52):
I don't know if it's as cool sounding as a
trip in the light. Fantastic That is a nice kind
of compound idiom mine are also are both single words.
The first one I don't know. Let's see what should
I do? I know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna
do dope. Ah, yes, yes, I'm gonna do some dope.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
On the show we Know, we talked about this off air, right,
We talked about this for a while off air. We
did about which words take up the mantle of describing
something good or cool, cool, og right.
Speaker 4 (15:23):
And also how it's sort of like a trendy thing
to use a word that inherently means something negative and
then flip it around and use it to describe something good.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
And dope is a really good example of that.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
But it actually has way more history than I ever
would have possibly given it credit for. So here let's
see where does our journey of dopeness begin.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
The first one I always think of is like being
a dope.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Well, that's see, and that doesn't even enter into this
at all.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Really.
Speaker 4 (15:51):
No, it's certainly a use of the word, and you'll
see why it was used that way, but that's not
really the direction that my that my research took me. Originally,
dope was a word that was used to describe some
kind of like a dipping sauce.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
Okay, so sort.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
Of like like you know, let's just say a honey muster,
but more like a gravy type dipping sauce.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
And it was a Dutch word.
Speaker 4 (16:16):
The origin being the word doupe, which is kind of
fun because you think, I don't know, I'm just speculating here.
You know, if you doupe somebody, you make a dope
out of them, right, So doupe was a thick, sticky
sauce or a gravy, and it became a part of
the English lexicon in the American colonies. Washington Irving, the
famous writer, what did you write, Ben, You're You're You're
(16:38):
a literature.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
Guy, Police Academy four that's the one.
Speaker 4 (16:41):
Famed screenwriter Washington Irving of the Police Academy movies fame.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
He also he also wrote the Legend of Sleepy.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
That's the guy old Ikoby Crane. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (16:52):
So Washington Irving introduced it an early example in his
satire called Salmon Gundy, which I have not read.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
Has anybody read Salmon Gundy?
Speaker 1 (17:03):
My different don't be fooled? Yeah, I read that, but
it was it's been many moons.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
Well, it was published in eighteen oh seven. So, and
this is where he described something called a felo dripping pan,
which is like a dough kind of like a I
don't know, like kind of like a baking situation. And
he used this term in this phrase quote love of
what the learned Dutch call doupe spelled doup, like soup
(17:31):
with a D. And then that is where dope started
to come into fruition as we know it today. And
it really started taking off, this idea of a syrupy,
goopy doopy dare we say substance in the smokable form
of opium that appeared in the New York City Rag Truth,
(17:53):
which is a great name for a newspaper, really instill
some confidence in the words printed therein. And it's talking
about opium fiends, dope heads, dope fiends as early as
eighteen eighty three. And here's a couple of quotes from
Truth and this comes from a fantastic article on visualthosaurus
dot com that talks about the history.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
Of dope doping, dopes, doop all of that stuff.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
Here is one from March sixth, eighteen eighty three. Interested,
but I love this word. Impecunious fiends receive therefore a
commission which immediately reverts to the proprietor of the opium
den in exchange for a pipe privilege and a shell
of dope.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Impetuous is a dressed up word meaning broke, That's right.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
And then they have another one here, which is my
favorite because it's got another phrase in it that I
would like to explore as well.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
Alexander was hitting the flute wow and rapidly getting to
the bottom of it of a quote hop toy of dope,
which is quote themed pattern for smoking a considerable quantity
of opium fiend pattern.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
That's that's great dope dope speak. The dope is cheap
and the joint keeper does not catchies. Bend C A
T E C H I S E. Catechise That makes sense.
What is that sort of like being reprimanded? Yes, really chastise,
catechise them as to whether or not they are minors.
Speaker 5 (19:22):
Oh so were they smoking dope joints like opium joints.
Speaker 4 (19:26):
You know, No, the joint, the joint keeper, as in
like theriet establishment. That's right, Yeah, the joint keeper, the
bar the barman a right, let's say. So that's fantastic.
So then we've got dope kind of making the transition
into being a verb that can have either a positive
or a negative connotation. So if you're doping something, you
(19:50):
are injecting it or imbuing it with some sort of
medicinal substance that can either have a positive or negative effect.
And it really started entering the lexicon of horse racing.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
Yes, because it came to mean inside info.
Speaker 4 (20:06):
Right, Well, we're gonna get there, absolutely, But it originally
was the way we think of with performance enhancing drugs.
You know, that is still a term that's used today
by the UH. It's a body that investigates and maintains
the standards of you know, testing athletes to make sure
they're not quote unquote doping. Anti doping laws is what
they call them that they enforce. But so originally with
(20:30):
it was not about athletes human athletes. It was about horses.
And it became such a you know thing, and they
would be uh. They could be injected with anything from
like whiskey injected, I might if inche to like a stimulant,
So you could, like you might dope someone else's horse
to like slip them a mickey hobble the horse exactly,
(20:51):
or you might you might you might inject or you know,
apply some sort of stimulant to your own horse so
it gives it a little edge. And then it became
so prevalent that when you knew, you knew about which
horses were being affected by what stuff. That became referred
to as the straight dope, the inside dope.
Speaker 5 (21:13):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Also that's the World Anti Doping Agency or WATA aha.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
I love a good acronym. So one last thing.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
It was originally used in drug parlance, I guess to
describe an opiate which would eventually be the most popular
or insidious version was heroin. So even when people are
suffering from heroin withdrawal or opiate withdrawal, they call it
getting dope sick.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
Right, that is a thing, and recently, more recently, it's
kind of almost exclusively used to refer to marijuana.
Speaker 4 (21:52):
Your dope, dope head. You know you're smoking dope, Right,
that's what your mom says. Right, it's sort of a
bit of a square thing to say these days. Right,
here's the thing, and looking into this, I found I'm
just gonna really quickly go through this. I found the
origins of four twenty.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Whoa nice laid honest.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Yeah. So there's an article in High Times magazine.
Speaker 4 (22:12):
Yeah, wow, it's true pots Brian plot twist about the
history of four twenty. So it turns out that there's
so many ideas about like what four to twenty was.
One of them was like, oh, there's four hundred and
twenty discrete distinct.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
Chemicals in marijuana. That seems like a stretch.
Speaker 4 (22:30):
Four twenty was supposedly like some kind of police radio
code for like dope smoking in action or whatever. Al, yeah,
we got a four twenty. Also not the case So
somebody reached out two High Times in the nineties early
nineties saying, now, no, no, none of this is true.
Me and my friends from.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
A high school. No, yeah, we know.
Speaker 4 (22:51):
Not only do we know, we invented it. Okay, So
and then we've got and I've got I've got proof.
So this guy reached out a guy by the name
of Brian Jarvins and who was a freelance writer for
High Times. He received this email or this correspondence from
a guy who was running a business in San Rafael, California,
which is very near San Francisco, and so he's like, okay,
(23:12):
I'm interested. The guy identified himself as Steve, Steve Waldo. Okay,
so he said, okay, me and my friends we referred
to ourselves as the Waldos, and we went to San
Rafael High School and we had a secret spot that
we were trying to find, a like a mission where
it was like going to be this patch of marijuana
(23:32):
was growing like someone had planted and they had to
like find it like Holy Grail style. And so they
agreed that one hour after school ended at four twenty,
they would meet and go on this sojourn to find
this marijuana field, it's so fascinating, and they interested, and
then they would meet by a statue of Louis Pasteur
at San Rafael High School, and they apparently.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Were known for their affinity for smoking the dope.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
The Marx Brothers in stand up comedy sounds like a
bunch of dangerous.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
High with never hang out with Steward would.
Speaker 6 (24:01):
Love it, You really would love That's fascinating, That so fascinating.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
That's Dope's very good, Ben, And it all started with Ben.
Your whole thing, like you know, using a negative to
describe a positive.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
Now it's something that the kids say when something is cool.
Speaker 6 (24:17):
It's interesting that it went from like such a harsh
drug as an opiate, to marijuana, which of course now
is more or less legal in most places or.
Speaker 4 (24:24):
Less, it is at least much more, much more universally
considered innocuous.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Exactly.
Speaker 5 (24:31):
Yeah, Yeah, I think dope is still kind of like,
you know, an opiate sort of word. It can be
a catch all, certainly specifically when you're talking about dope sickness.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
That's right, and this Coca Cola drugs. This leads us
to an important point and a question I think that
we were asking each other off the air when the
four of us were hanging out. Uh, how do we
get in front of this? What's the right now? Dope?
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Is encountering telling a moment?
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Yeah, it's having a moment, it's having a renaissance, right,
the same the cool did, wicked, sick, rad, gnarly, tubular, radical,
and the question that keeps haunting me. I mean, I
don't think we figured this out when we were talking
about this earlier. What's the next one? What's the next
word that's going to inherit this mantle? You know what
(25:17):
I mean? Like, what's the what's the next dope?
Speaker 3 (25:20):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
It's a one word?
Speaker 4 (25:22):
Probably it probably is. Is it possible that that our
friend Rowan Nuby has it?
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Sure?
Speaker 6 (25:27):
I'm honored that you would think that I have a
cornucopia of silly words just floating around on the bank
of my Why they brought me in here? Actually, okay,
let's just uh, let's just thrust some out there. What
about slut slunt slunt? Yeah, it's kind of kind of gross.
It's maybe it's like maybe it's like your mean, Maybe
(25:49):
someone is mean that's a.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Harsh mouthfield maybe like flong about like.
Speaker 6 (25:56):
Right, now, dude, last night I got really uh poddled.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
That's like that means too much? Yes, serious. I went
through a phase where, for some reason, and I never
apologized Casey to you or nol on air, so I
should do it now. I went through it. I get
stuck in certain phrases and I over use them very easily.
And I went through a period where I was just
(26:22):
instead of saying yes to something or great or I've
seen this email I was replying to I was replying
to you guys with just zanzibar because I like and
no one ever called me on you guys, never said, dude,
what are you talking about? Just let it roll?
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Really, you know, I mean, Ben's going to be Ben.
Speaker 6 (26:42):
If you're bold enough and you just yeah, gownly if
you own it.
Speaker 4 (26:46):
No one's gonna say anything that's the truth with any
of these words. And we've coined a few on the
show ourselves, like a straight Seahorse T shirt.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
Yeah, has been making the rounds with some of the
folks on the Ridiculous History page.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Yeah we actually we should, we should paying Some of
our fellow listener is rode In and it told us
that they were propagating this phrase, which we thought was fantastic.
I gotta admit, man, I don't know about you know
that I had no idea straight seahorse teeth would take off.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
You must have had a little inkling.
Speaker 5 (27:14):
Then the first day you hear that in the wild
is going to be amazing.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Wow. Do you think we will? You will? I hope so,
I hope it's in a really weird situation.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
What other situations do we find ourselves in in the wild?
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Then it's true we don't have regular days now, you
really don't.
Speaker 4 (27:29):
But we do have another idiom to throw out at you,
don't we. I think it's yours, my friend Rowan, That.
Speaker 6 (27:35):
Is correct, I do have one, since that is the
game we're playing here. How funny would it be if
I just was like, oh wait, I was supposed to
do homework. No, I just was sitting here drinking coconut water.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
What do I have here? Cucumber was a.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
Cucumber montane sparkling water, made right here in the heart
of Atlanta, Georgia.
Speaker 6 (27:56):
Is it true that if we say the company name
of the product too more times they'll send us a
case of it?
Speaker 3 (28:01):
We already have cases. Yeah, we're office one okay, oh
you take with you.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Take them with you. You guys are take away from
the fun of getting free things. But okay, do you
want us to like make it a scavenger hunt or
like make it more fun? Sure? Okay, Well we'll give
you a series of clues at the end of the episode.
Do I see them a little off to that? Seem
all right? I'm a little I drank a lot last night.
Well you know, I'm not a hangover doctor or whatever.
(28:30):
But you seem fine. What do you think, guys? Does
he seem alright?
Speaker 5 (28:33):
You look great?
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Yeah, he looks like you're absolutely glowing.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Okay, Well, good that that shower helped.
Speaker 6 (28:38):
Uh Well, the reason I ask is because, uh, you know,
we've all knocked back a few in our local watering
hole and woke up feeling rather ripe, which is called
the local, which is called we might as well say, yeah,
it's it's it really is on the nose. Yeah, you
can be pretty gnarly if you drink too much, which
brings up my first idiom here the time honored colloquialism
hair of the dog, which is a yes, which is
(29:02):
a short for, of course, hair of the dog that
bit you.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
So because this one. I I have no idea what
the etymology is, but I've heard it used again in
the wild, sure, And it's usually when someone starts drinking
kind of early in the day, you know, not distressingly early,
not like airport, but yeah, like brunch early.
Speaker 6 (29:22):
Yeah, sure, and I mean it's it's You can also
infer from the way where it's used in normal conversation
that it's to quell the aching headache from the night before.
You wake up with a headache because you're hungover, and
so you're like, oh, hair the dog, the bitch you.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
I'm just gonna keep drinking.
Speaker 6 (29:38):
That'll solve everything if I just keep drinking. Right in
question Mark, I hear the dog Lloyd, Yeah, exact, of course.
I always think of the shining too. Yeah, and it's
referring to the it's a it's a cure like finger
quotes cure.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
There's no scientific proof that it works whatsoever, but the.
Speaker 6 (29:53):
Story goes, yeah, if you indulge too much, the next day,
you ingest more of the same alcohol and it quells this.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Pain in your head.
Speaker 6 (30:00):
But at the origin of the expression dates back to
medieval times actually, when it was thought that after being
bit by a rabid dog. One could relieve the pain
by simply rubbing some hairs from the same dog into
your wound.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
Okay, first of all, that's disgusting. That seems very unsane.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
No, No, I'm not a doctor. I don't recommend them.
Speaker 4 (30:20):
I mean it is something that we've talked about in
other episodes of the show. This sort of like I
don't know, you hear about it in medieval practitioners of remedies.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
You know, I'm not even gonna call them doctor. That
wasn't quite even a thing yet, but it's seemed like
leeching or blood letting, only this is like almost like
the idea of fighting fire with fire, right.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Yeah, sympathetic magic. This theory was first developed by a
guy named Sir James Frasier in his masterpiece The Golden Boat.
And in this the argument is that like can cure
like this correlation between things, whether they're related through their
(30:59):
physicality or whether they're related through their space and time
in the event.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
Right, like a voodoo doll or something.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Sure, yeah, or like how you could become a werewolf
by drinking water from a wolf print in the woods,
which is also, by the way, not true. If you
were about to give it a go. I don't think
it'll work, but right in if it does once you
transform back. But you're absolutely right. Well, it's kind of
the idea that the poison can help create the antidote.
Speaker 6 (31:29):
Yeah, you guys always enlightened me on my own idioms
that I bring to the table.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
I love the What did you call what kind of magic?
Was that? Sympathetic eathetic magic?
Speaker 4 (31:37):
Yeah, it's sort of like a sympathetic vibration, right, So
it's if something vibrates at the right frequency, it makes
it something else vibrate at that same frequency. So sympathetic
magic would be like if you are interacting with something
related to the malady that you're suffering from or maybe
even dare we say the cause, that it will somehow
cure it.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
But what you're getting at Rong, which.
Speaker 4 (31:58):
I totally agree with, is that this is completely magical thinking.
It's this idea that I to be less drunk or
to feel less bad, I should just drink more and
sure it'll make you.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
Feel a little better because you're drunk again.
Speaker 6 (32:11):
It's also it's alsobies right and also, how do you
get the subsequent hairs from the same dog that bit you.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
I feel like reas that's right.
Speaker 4 (32:25):
It requires some sort of mystical quest because that here, okay,
here we go. I propose something, this idea of seeking
out some sort of creature that has wronged you and
then you have to kill it to get the hair.
That's sort of the idea is you gotta you gotta
slay the beast and then you get the hair, rub
it on your wounds. But let's apply this to you
(32:46):
know how the idiom came around to bar times.
Speaker 6 (32:49):
I guess, like, who doesn't like a good mimosa or
bloody Mary in the morning. Let's be honest, you know,
I was just a little nip and morning guy.
Speaker 4 (32:58):
I just recently started liking blady. But I was shocked
out at the airport at like six am this morning.
I'm looking in the.
Speaker 3 (33:04):
People are pouring vodka and the airport bar at six
that had to be some hair the alcohol thing.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Well, they're also they're also possibly, in their defense, they're
coming from a very different time zone. Could be we
do have the world's busiest airport. Oh okay, well never mind,
no no, no, no, no, no, you never know. But well
I've decided to assume that's fair.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
I was a little shocked, and you know, even weirder,
I was like, maybe I should I should have a
little nippet six in the morning.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
That seems fun.
Speaker 6 (33:32):
You know, if I see someone drinking that much at
an airport, I go they fly all of the time.
They are getting on airplanes like four times a week
or something.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
Because the thing about airports is that's sort of like
a liminal space where it's like a space between spaces,
and so the normal rules of decorum and life skills
do not apply when you're at the air absolutely true.
Speaker 5 (33:53):
Like garbage.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
What happens in the airport?
Speaker 3 (33:56):
Pants, sweatpants and pocket shots, crocs, trip that light, fantastic.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
We have some airport war stories that would be great
for a future episode. What do you think that's diving
into our personal lives a little? I'm fine with you, okay,
but I have a question for you. Real sure, Okay.
This is illuminating to me and I cannot help. But
wonder what kind of terrible night someone had where they
went on this quest. As Noel said, they were bitten
(34:23):
by a rabid dog. They hunted it down, they took
its hair, and then in the morning they started drinking
booze and someone's like, whoa, hey, dude, are you okay? Like,
how bad does your now? Bad does not have to
be right exactly.
Speaker 6 (34:39):
I mean alcohol will always act, as you know, a
numbing agent. I feel like, I mean, for God's sake.
Then they used to put whiskey and milk and give
it to their kids. You know, I still do that,
just random children.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
Oh okay, you.
Speaker 4 (34:55):
Know, I actually found a really good physiological description of
it on a website called vinepaar dot com, which is
a great name for a website.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Yeah, this is a great name. I actually have the
same source. What did you find I found?
Speaker 3 (35:09):
You know?
Speaker 6 (35:09):
Yeah, I was talking about these physiological aspects of like
how you know the alcohol affects you like bloody Mary
works because the alcohol inside the drink begins acting on
the chemical receptors inside the brain to increase the feelings
of pleasure. It's actually why so many people like booze
in the first place, and also probably why you drank
so much the night before, and the chemical reaction begins
to overpower the hangover symptoms, thus allowing us to feel
(35:31):
at least momentarily from the bad decisions of the previous night.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
So and what is life but a series of momentary reliefs? Yeah,
and quick fixes.
Speaker 5 (35:40):
You know, have any of y'all ever had Hair of
the Dog actually cure your hangover, because that's always been
like a delay strategy for me. Like when I've worked
in a restaurant, I was like, let me just get
through the lunch rush, right like in d stem spinach
for the next three hours and then go home.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
I've Yeah, I'm not a practitioner of Hair of the Dog,
even when I live in a crazy airport life. It
just seems strange to introduce that kind of variable after,
you know, especially if you've had a night where you
were drinking and you wake up the next day like
maybe you can, maybe you can power through, as you said, Frank,
(36:15):
delay until about three pm or something. At some point
your body has.
Speaker 6 (36:19):
Some metabolize this alcohol, like unless you just steadily drink
from that point to the rest of your.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
Life, which is really increasingly shorter. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (36:28):
No, it really does seem like prolonging the inevitable. I
am incapable of day drinking successfully too. I know that
Frank that you have, You're not That's not our thing.
It's just like because I get sleepy, I get cranky.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
It's not fun. It just is going to kill my day.
Speaker 4 (36:42):
I don't care what kind of night I've had the
night before. I'm just going to power through. And we
have some very helpful tips for this. All of a sudden,
this has become alcoholism.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
One on one, just drink a lot of water.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Drink a lot.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
That has always cured my headache. If I just drink
a lot of water. I don't want to drink booze.
I wanted to water hydrated kids. And you know, a
little bit of a little bit of a leave, a
little bit of ibuprofen and something, eat something.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Yeah, you drink. Be married, No, don't be married.
Speaker 3 (37:12):
Feel sad, be ashamed of yourself because if you're a
garbage person and you don't deserve.
Speaker 5 (37:17):
To be happy, you should never drink again.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
And you should you should make wildly melodramatic proclamations all
that to everyone.
Speaker 5 (37:26):
You know on social media.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
People you don't. Yeah.
Speaker 6 (37:34):
So I found this phrase from this old English writer
named John Heywood on phrases dot Org that supposedly the
first origin of Hair of the Dog fifteen forty six.
I thought it was really interesting.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
Are you going to read it. I am going to
read it. Will you do a voice? I one, We'll
do all right. I'm in.
Speaker 6 (37:51):
I pray they let me and my fellow have a
hair of the dog that bit us last night and
bitten were we both on the brain?
Speaker 1 (38:00):
It literally says that we saw each other drunk and
the good ale glass.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
Bit on the brain. So what you're saying is I
think we were talking off Mike, how both to the brain?
Both to the brain. That's great.
Speaker 4 (38:18):
So you were telling me a little bit off, Mike
that this article talks about how some of these phrases
don't really come into popular use until like the literal
version of it sort of falls out. So this is
sort of what you're seeing. There is this gentleman using
that to describe the actual experience of being hungover, and
exactly he's kind of using it as a metaphor when
(38:41):
it was sort of a folkloric tradition in the first place,
right exactly.
Speaker 6 (38:45):
It's interesting, yeah, super fascinating, and.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
We still use it to this day.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Something. So we've got dope, hair of the dog and
tripping the light. Fantastic. I'm glad that we set this
up as a two part in the beginning this This
is one of those shows that I wish wouldn't end,
but we will have to end today's episode eventually. I
have I have one contribution. I feel like the uh,
(39:13):
the evil character and a fairy tale going. I have
a presence from a child. There's one more gift. This
phrase is something that we've heard before, and I primed
you guys just a little bit off air for this.
The word is god Zukes, and so that's why I
was like sliding that in hot topic mall gad Zukes
(39:34):
Spencer's uh. For a lot of us in our age
group in this part of the world, when we hear
the phrase godzooks, we associate it with the store that
used to be quite popular in the era of malls,
and it was called Goadzukes.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
Are we in a post mall America?
Speaker 6 (39:51):
Yes, it's getting I guess that's because the mall used
to be like a central like fixture of like hanging
out hangout center.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
It was the center of town.
Speaker 4 (40:01):
God Zukes was also like where you would buy those
giant pants that were called Jinko's. Younger listeners and maybe
don't remember this absurd time or.
Speaker 6 (40:09):
That orb with the lightning. Ooh, the glass that would
touch or the pill you put your hand and it
showed its your hand in the metal.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
Which those things have to be filthy by now, yeah,
the ones on display and like the science store face.
So it turns out that god zeukes actually has a
storied history, you know, things like goad zukes or zounds,
(40:40):
which is also related on the yep uh. They sound
like something you would hear on the old Adam West.
Yeah scooby doo, the old Adam West batman, but they
have religious origins. Dictionary references date gad zookes as far
back as the late sixteen hundreds as a shortening of
another exclamation, which was by God's hooks. Whoa God's hooks
(41:05):
be a reference to the nails on the cross of
Jesus Christ.
Speaker 4 (41:10):
You know what first popped into my head when you
said God's hooks? I pictured God as being like pinhead
from hell razors shutting out hooks into the flesh of
a damn.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
I I was thinking that too, like a god with
you know that has an unseeable form except for the
hooks where the hands should be. You know this this
super pirate yeh, super pirate this weird because I mentioned
zounds earlier. Zounds also appears to date back to around
the fifteen hundreds as a euphemism for the phrase by
(41:40):
God's wounds.
Speaker 4 (41:42):
So it should be pronounced zoons should probably should be
z O U N D S right.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
And I guess it depends on yourselves, right, So this
phrase god zooks is not alone in its evolution, even
phrases there's somewhat innocuous, like Jeeper's creepy. It was originally
euphemism to get around saying Jesus Christ, but still still
have the same thing. I think the guy who meets yeah,
(42:08):
I think the guy who made the film Jeepers Creepers
doesn't know that. But also apparently that guy's a creep
I've heard. Yeah, I'm a big fan of JEsum crow.
That's that's good. I'm a big fan of cheese and crackers.
Good people say that, right, Oh for sure? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (42:23):
Children, I said that earlier, Yes, yeah, right.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
Or just the strangers on the train. So it's an exclamation.
We don't hear it too often now. I think Prince
Philip said it in These are modern days, but it
would be unusual for us to be hanging out and
maybe have a surprise party for Casey and for him
to see the cake and whatever, you know, Mariachi band
(42:49):
or whatever we had to spice it up. It would
be really strange for him to go Dad Zooks, wouldn't
it well.
Speaker 4 (42:55):
I mean, you know, these hip young millennials these days,
they bring back this stuff all the time, saying ironically,
you know, yeah, I say, Zoike's a lot.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
That's true. That's true. I started saying oish and I
have no idea why. It's just stutched in my head.
I think I just made it up so like, I
don't know. I was just so surprised that's what came out.
And it's like, I'll keep that one. But the use
of gad for God occurs in other phrases too, gad
gad and these are called phraseological combinations. There are other
(43:29):
ones that didn't make the cut. God zekes is did
that Coca Cola reference earlier? Goad Zukes is one of
the most successful of these turns of phrase. I would like, yeah,
I'd like to end this part of the show by
telling introducing you guys to some God Zukes esque things
that didn't make it. They're all ridiculous. Are you prepared?
Speaker 3 (43:55):
All right?
Speaker 1 (43:56):
Gad's Bob's also an exclamation, Gad's bob, Uh, God's lid.
There's God's bud likings.
Speaker 3 (44:09):
Can we bring that back?
Speaker 1 (44:11):
God's buddly goods? And then God's nouns nouns in u
n s. That's just lazy. I mean, I think the
clear audience favorite here is God's bud likings.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
It's bud bud lickings.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Bud.
Speaker 3 (44:30):
That would be a good name for a Dukes of
Hazard character.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
Budd. Oh gosh, So this is strange. Gods, Gods buds likings.
We found out about tripping the light fantastic the hair
of the dog that bid us and it was overall
pretty dopey.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
Thanks man, sounds just a little bit.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
I deserved it.
Speaker 3 (44:55):
I opened them wide and affection and admiration from my
dear co host Bimbol.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
Thank you, Noel Brown. And likewise, one thing that we
found there was a great interest to us on our
first episode of Idiomatic for the People was that, in
the course of the show, we had totally without planning
it used several, like multiple different turns of phrase or
figures of speech idioms that we did not even notice
(45:23):
until we went back and listened to it. So I
wonder if we did that today as well, No doubt
about it, no doubt about it.
Speaker 5 (45:32):
That's there's a really cool video by Kishi Bashi who
crams like one hundred and twenty or so idioms into
a single music video. That's really cool.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
Well, we got four.
Speaker 3 (45:47):
We're doing our best. We're living our best life.
Speaker 6 (45:49):
I know, Kishi Bashi, bud we're working our way.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
I'll do it. But who is not even him sometimes?
Speaker 3 (45:55):
But he is from Mathews, Georgia, which is also where
Arim is from, which is one of Frank's favorite which
is where Idiomatic for the people came from. So thanks R. E. M.
Speaker 4 (46:04):
And thanks Frank Mulharan for helping dub this segment.
Speaker 1 (46:08):
All right, thank you, and thanks.
Speaker 3 (46:10):
For coming on the show. Dude, Thanks for having me. Rob,
Thanks to you as well. My pleasure.
Speaker 4 (46:16):
You you you, you dashing man with your He's got
a shirt on that you guys wouldn't believe.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
It's got boots on it.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
It's very colorful. I wanted to take a picture, but
I didn't want to look weird. Oh no, it's fine.
Everyone takes pictures of everything these days.
Speaker 6 (46:29):
All right, Well, that that which man is wearing Google
glasses right now. We keep telling them they're out of fashion,
They're no longer even function.
Speaker 4 (46:39):
He keeps saying, Okay, Google, take a picture of shirts Google.
Speaker 1 (46:46):
All right, Well, you guys busted me. They are apparently
not as inconspicuous as I thought. But yes, thank you
so much for coming on the show. If you would
like to hear more from our good friend Frank the Taint,
more hair and fear not, because you're essentially a shadow
member of our podcast, like we run ideas past Frank yep,
(47:10):
and Frank will sometimes give us ideas and we just
try not to disappoint.
Speaker 4 (47:13):
I mean, I'm a little worried that having his actual
voice on the show is going to open up some
sort of rift and time space.
Speaker 3 (47:18):
But I'm willing to take chance, godless hope not.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
If you want to. If you want to hear more
from our good friend Rowan Newby, check out his podcast Pitches.
What is pitches?
Speaker 6 (47:30):
Pitches is a podcast a boad ideas. It is a
comedy podcast, and boy, oh boy, I would love it
if any of these fellow listeners would like to ride
in any ideas I mean really, it can be an
app a turn of phrase. How about that, It could
be a you know, an invention or who knows, and
Nolan goes on, you were on a great episode.
Speaker 1 (47:51):
Of that's correct.
Speaker 3 (47:52):
Yeah, I think it's coming out soon.
Speaker 4 (47:54):
It's out today, out today, so well, this would be
a little removed from that in time, so it already
exists in the world.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (48:01):
I pitched a really silly idea for a suntann lotion
that gets you drunk.
Speaker 6 (48:07):
Ah, the old hair of the tan that tanned you.
Speaker 1 (48:11):
Right. Oh, that was very good.
Speaker 3 (48:14):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 4 (48:15):
I think we've got a future episode coming up where
Ben is going to.
Speaker 1 (48:19):
Correctly, that's in the that's in the cards tune.
Speaker 6 (48:23):
If you want to find us on the instagrams, you
know what to do at Pitches Podcast Baby shameless plug.
Speaker 1 (48:30):
Oh, we're far past the point of shame for plugs.
Speaking of plugs, you can find us and your fellow
listeners on our Facebook page Ridiculous Historians. We're also all
over Twitter and Instagram. We've even started sharing our own
personal adventures. Is that right?
Speaker 3 (48:48):
No, that's right. I am at Embryonic Insider.
Speaker 1 (48:50):
And I am at Ben Bolan We hope that you
enjoy this episode. We hope you tune in for the
next one as idiomatic. For the people soldiers on Frank,
I cannot emphasize it enough. We're huge fans of that name.
Thank you. We're thanking you profusely because we're I think
legally we're we're we don't have to pay you.
Speaker 3 (49:12):
It's fine what we do. We're also profuse thankers just
in general, that's true.
Speaker 4 (49:16):
Thank you, Ben, and thank you super producer Kasey Pegrim.
Thank you Alex Williams, a composer our theme. Thank you Gabe,
our research associate who had absolutely nothing to.
Speaker 3 (49:26):
Do with this episode today, but we still thank him
just the same. He's a great realmnch. And thanks to
you Benbowan for being such a dashing and debonair co hosts.
And that jacket and those Google glasses are really popping today.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
You know what, I've committed to the bit.
Speaker 3 (49:41):
That's what you gotta do. We'll see you next timebox.
Speaker 4 (49:47):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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