November 19, 2025 • 14 mins
What do you do when you want to tell someone you’re smitten with them but you live in a society so repressive decorum prevents you from even speaking such things? Why, you can say it with flowers! And that’s just what people in the Victorian Era did.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and
there's Chuck. And that's all that needs mentioning today because
it's just us. So this is short.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Stuff, that's right. And by the way, I wanted to
thank you for sending over that beautiful nosegay of wilted
white roses, delivered upside down with the ribbon to the left.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Well, may I ask where on your chest? Are you
wearing it near my bodice in the center or right
in the center?
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Baby?
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Well, I guess we're good friends. Then I can live
with that. Although I'm not sure what I was saying
with the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
It's kind of yeah, i'd have to get out a
code decoder book or whatever.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Well they had those, Chuck. What we're talking about was floriography,
and there were a lot of floriography books, because it
turns out floriography was a huge deal in the Victorian
and Regency areas. I guess between a couple of decades
on either side of the nineteenth and twentieth century divide
the DMZ of those centuries. As it were, this was
(01:04):
it was really popular to send unspoken messages using flowers.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
That's right, unspoken because at the time in the UK
and parts of the US, obviously in Europe in certain
you know, high societies, mainly you could not speak these
things allowed a lot of times it was untoward. So
you had to have a coded way of talking to
each other. And if you're thinking like, oh, yeah, you
send flowers to someone and that means something, Yeah, it
(01:32):
goes deep. I mean it is literally a code. And
that's what I was kind of referring to with the
upside down and the wilted and the where the ribbons tied,
like all that stuff means something.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
It does. Yeah, it is quite deep, and you can
send quite complex messages and what kind of show what
we're talking about. But first I want to shout out
some great sources that helped with this Farmer's Almanac. The
Iowa State University Extension, Pedal Republic, it's a great name.
Author Sarah on Substack, Clive Rose, Georgina Garden Center, Thursdad,
(02:07):
just the d flower Meaning and historical Holly all help
us this. So thanks to all of you.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Yeah, that's wonderful. So this is nothing new or was
nothing new back then. Coded messages through flowers goes back
to the sixteen hundreds at least in the Ottoman Empire,
when they had a tradition called selim or sealim se
l a m, which was a game where between the
members of the Harem of Constantinople, where they would send
(02:37):
flowers attached with like rhymes and meanings and stuff like
that to communicate with one another.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Yeah, which made sense because a lot of them couldn't
read or write, so flowers did the talking forum. And
this actually spread from the Ottoman Empire to Europe via
one single person, a British aristocrat who is married to
the British Ambassador to Turkey. Her name was Lady Mary Wortley,
and she would send back letters to friends and family
(03:04):
describing all of the new and exotic customs of this
land that she had moved to. She moved to Constantinople,
and among them was a description of salam or salam selim,
which how did you say it?
Speaker 2 (03:16):
I said, sell them or selim. I'm not sure if
it's a long or shorty.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Well, the flower coat that the harrm workers had come
up with. She wrote a letter about that, and somebody
got it and said, this is great. I want to
tell everybody in the UK about it.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
That's right. And by the way, I mentioned a couple
of puns in the Operation Paul Bunyan episode. Which one
were you thinking because you said you remembered.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
One that the code stemmed back.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Yeah, that was one.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
That's the only one I can think of.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Well, no, here's the other one. Botany was a growing field.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
How did I miss that pun sensor is covered with dirt?
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Well, no, that's good. You want to pack some mud
on that thing.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
I know, but I don't like walking past stuff. I
like to take part, you know, and be involved in
the mix.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
So botany was a growing field, and floriography was, like
I said, among certain classes, you know, mainly upper class women,
because you know, it wasn't like the kind of thing
that you could really talk about openly in that class.
And this is one thing I haven't seen Emily yet
today because she got out of the house early. But
I wanted to ask her because she's, you know, like
(04:29):
a lot of GenEx women are obsessed with Jane Austen
stuff and sense and sensibility and all those series and
movies and books, and I wondered if she knew about
this or if they in those because I've never watched
any of them, if they were kind of pointed stuff out, like, oh,
he sent the flowers this way and that means this.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
But that's I mean, that's the Browni sisters and Jane
Austin used a lot of floriography to help kind of
develop their characters, which I guess, so I guess they did. Yeah,
they definitely did. And the readers at the time probably
would have picked up this. But floriography is it's become
so arcane and obscure that modern readers would not pick
up on it. But if you learn about floriography and
you start reading Jane Austin, apparently it'll show up.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Oh well, no, that's what I was wondering if in
the books and they said, like, oh, will he sent
an upside down thing which means blah blah blah.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Yes, yeah, they would do that. I found a quote
from Pride and Prejudice from Jane Austen.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Ooh, can you read it in character?
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Well, it's the narrator, so sure, I guess I can,
because the narrator sounds exactly like me. Yeah, but Elizabeth
Bennett is giving a flower to mister Darcy, and the
narrator describes she gave a red rose to tell him
that she loved him Red Rose, red red red, red
red Rose Rose Rose, red red Rose, red Rose, red Rose,
(05:50):
red red red red. And then in the i think
the first edition, the word red is just repeated over
and over for three pages before it just stops. In
a new chapter starts.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
That's so hot. Yeah, all right, I need to go
cool down. Should we take a break?
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Yeah? I think so. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
All right, we'll come back and tell you about a
lot of this what these coated flowers mean right after this.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
If you want to know, then you're in luck. Just
listen to h Suffus stuffus. No, so, Chuck, you mentioned
(06:38):
that I gave you a nosegay. Another great word for
a nosegay is a tuessy mussy, and floriography in the
Victorian Age started to get popular at the same time
that tuessy mussies and nosegays were popular too. And they're
really kind of small, short, tightly bound bouquets that you
would kind of wear, almost as like a booteneer or
a corsage. Okay, they were made of flowers and herbs,
(07:02):
so not just flowers, but herbs had their own meanings too,
so like rosemary was for remembrance and mint was for clarity.
Moss even had its own meaning charity or maternal love.
Throw a violet in there, maybe for modesty. If you
put all those together in a little tussy musty and
gave it to somebody, you would be saying something like,
(07:23):
I modestly ask you to clearly remember me with either
charity or maternal love your pick.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Yeah, which would be a very confusing message. It would
be paging doctor Freud on that one, for sure. So
the obviously, you know, the type of flower is gonna matter.
The color of the flower is gonna matter. Many messages
could be sent. If you wanted to send a message
of rejection or disappointment, it could be a yellow carnation
(07:50):
or a yellow rose. But if you send a yellow lily,
that means that you're just sort of over the moon
and walking on air.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Obviously, the red rose is going to mean I love
you you. White rose is purity, a yellow roses loss
of love, and a crimson rose is for morning with
mu are right?
Speaker 1 (08:09):
And I mean like that is just skimming the surface.
Just the color of different types of roses, right, or
different color roses the state that the flowers and mattered
a lot too. You may mention, I think of a
withered rose in the tussy mussy I gave you. If
you gave somebody just a plain white rose, you could
be saying, like, I think you're heavenly, you're very pure,
(08:30):
and I like that. But if the white rose was withered,
you were telling them that they made no impression on
you whatsoever, or that you think their beauty is fleeting,
so remember that. And then if it was dried, you
were saying, I would rather die than to give into
your advances because I care about my virtue. And I'm
sure you could be like, you know, if you gave
(08:51):
somebody a withered rose, would you'd be like, is this
dried or withered? What are you trying to stay? Here?
So I know how much was like in the beholder's eye?
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Yeah, yeah, I mean translation is important, and you know
we'll get to that here in a sec. But a
thornless rose means you've fallen in love at first sight.
Thornless crimson rose means you're mourning, because remember crimson rose
this morning, but you're mourning an unrequited love at first sight.
And also the context really matters like you know, you
(09:22):
obviously kind of know what's going on between you. It's
when you're getting these or you know you're you're seeking clarity,
but you you know there's an established thing kind of
happening here for your own context. So if you get
a hydrangea, it can be thanking the receiver for understanding,
or that you think they're frigid and heartless. So you
really got to kind of have a read on the
(09:43):
general air of the relationship.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Yeah, same with like petunias. You could be saying you
soothed me or I resent to you. So the context
definitely mattered. But the reason why like hydranges and peonies
and almost all of the flowers had multiple meanings was
not because they needed to pull double duty because we
didn't have enough flowers and enough colors. Like if you
put all those together, you have a mind boggling number
(10:06):
of combinations. So that wasn't it. The reason they had
multiple meanings was because there were many, many different floriography
books and essentially a lot of them just assign different
meanings to different flowers. Yeah, so when you gave somebody flowers,
especially if there wasn't a lot of context yet, you
were just hoping that you guys were working from the
(10:27):
same book.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Yeah, I mean, that's that's huge.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
I think there were ninety eight different guides just in
the United States alone that were circulating from eighteen twenty
seven to nineteen twenty three.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Not helpful at all. And then you know, I also
mentioned that they were presented upside down. That also matters.
If they are upside down, that's it basically says it's
opposite day. So I guess you're trying to sort of
maybe confuse if like if Mum is looking on and
sees these flowers, But it would seem like Mum would
know about opposite day too, So I'm not really sure.
(11:02):
You know why they would do that, Maybe to throw
somebody off the scent. Who knows. How the ribbon was
tied also matters. Tied to the left, it's the symbolism
is applied to the giver, Right, it's tied to the
right if it's in reference to the recipient.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Yeah, yeah, I know, this is how deep it kits.
It could also express a lot of negative meanings, and
I think that's what you were doing when you handed
a bouquet upside down. You'd have to be pretty sharp
to put a bunch of mean flowers in and then
hand it to the person upside down to let them
know you meant the opposite.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Yeah, but there's a lot of trouble to go through.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Right there. Were Like you could be talking about jealousy
with marigolds. You could be expressing distrust with lavender orange
lily straight up said I hate you. You could say
I feel deceived with snapdragons. You could declare war with
a flower called a tansy, which I hadn't heard of before.
But it's like a bunch a bunch of like small
(11:58):
yellow flowers to get there, unlike a single stalk.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Okay, I thought that might have been a misprint pansy,
but I literally looked at my computer keyboard and it
was like, nah, I bet it's that team the peer
pretty far apart.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Yeah, I just I didn't know that that flower existed,
but by goodness it does.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Also, accepting also mattered. So depending on which hand you
accepted the flowers with sent a message, which I guess would.
I mean, if you're handing them in person, you would know,
but if not, you had to have it relayed back
to you. Yeah, if you accepted with the right hand,
it was a yes. The left hand was a no.
If you held the bouquet upside down after getting it,
(12:36):
that's rejection. If someone gave you a wisteria, maybe like
asking for a dance at a dance, you would hold
it upside down with your left hand if you wanted
to say no, thank.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
You, right yeah, you were really saying I'm passing with
that because you're that's a double no, although the person
giving it could be like, is that a double negative?
Like a yes? Is it opposite day? So you could also,
as the receiver, send flowers in return too, like if
somebody actually sent you flowers or a bouquet with a
message and didn't physically hand it to you, you could
(13:09):
reply with flowers yourselves. Carnations came in handy for that.
If you sent a solid colored carnation, it meant yes.
A yellow carnation was a big fat no. A striped
carnation was letting them down a little easier, but it
was still a no. It said I'm sorry, but I
can't be with you.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
I wonder which flower meant like, you know, are you down?
Speaker 1 (13:33):
There was something like that out there. I guarantee you
I don't know which one, Yeah, but there was definitely something.
And then the last part. I asked you where you
were wearing your nosegay, and you said in the center
of your bodice, which meant I just want to be friends.
But if you had warned over your heart, Chuck, I
would have known that you were saying, I love you
right back, buddy.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Hey, I do love you right back, buddy. Just you know,
not like that.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
I understand. I took my shot. Yeah, I guess, then,
Chuck us short stuff is out, I think so. Stuff
you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and
there's Chuck. And that's all that needs mentioning today because
it's just us. So this is short.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Stuff, that's right. And by the way, I wanted to
thank you for sending over that beautiful nosegay of wilted
white roses, delivered upside down with the ribbon to the left.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Well, may I ask where on your chest? Are you
wearing it near my bodice in the center or right
in the center?
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Baby?
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Well, I guess we're good friends. Then I can live
with that. Although I'm not sure what I was saying
with the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
It's kind of yeah, i'd have to get out a
code decoder book or whatever.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Well they had those, Chuck. What we're talking about was floriography,
and there were a lot of floriography books, because it
turns out floriography was a huge deal in the Victorian
and Regency areas. I guess between a couple of decades
on either side of the nineteenth and twentieth century divide
the DMZ of those centuries. As it were, this was
(01:04):
it was really popular to send unspoken messages using flowers.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
That's right, unspoken because at the time in the UK
and parts of the US, obviously in Europe in certain
you know, high societies, mainly you could not speak these
things allowed a lot of times it was untoward. So
you had to have a coded way of talking to
each other. And if you're thinking like, oh, yeah, you
send flowers to someone and that means something, Yeah, it
(01:32):
goes deep. I mean it is literally a code. And
that's what I was kind of referring to with the
upside down and the wilted and the where the ribbons tied,
like all that stuff means something.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
It does. Yeah, it is quite deep, and you can
send quite complex messages and what kind of show what
we're talking about. But first I want to shout out
some great sources that helped with this Farmer's Almanac. The
Iowa State University Extension, Pedal Republic, it's a great name.
Author Sarah on Substack, Clive Rose, Georgina Garden Center, Thursdad,
(02:07):
just the d flower Meaning and historical Holly all help
us this. So thanks to all of you.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Yeah, that's wonderful. So this is nothing new or was
nothing new back then. Coded messages through flowers goes back
to the sixteen hundreds at least in the Ottoman Empire,
when they had a tradition called selim or sealim se
l a m, which was a game where between the
members of the Harem of Constantinople, where they would send
(02:37):
flowers attached with like rhymes and meanings and stuff like
that to communicate with one another.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Yeah, which made sense because a lot of them couldn't
read or write, so flowers did the talking forum. And
this actually spread from the Ottoman Empire to Europe via
one single person, a British aristocrat who is married to
the British Ambassador to Turkey. Her name was Lady Mary Wortley,
and she would send back letters to friends and family
(03:04):
describing all of the new and exotic customs of this
land that she had moved to. She moved to Constantinople,
and among them was a description of salam or salam selim,
which how did you say it?
Speaker 2 (03:16):
I said, sell them or selim. I'm not sure if
it's a long or shorty.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Well, the flower coat that the harrm workers had come
up with. She wrote a letter about that, and somebody
got it and said, this is great. I want to
tell everybody in the UK about it.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
That's right. And by the way, I mentioned a couple
of puns in the Operation Paul Bunyan episode. Which one
were you thinking because you said you remembered.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
One that the code stemmed back.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Yeah, that was one.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
That's the only one I can think of.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Well, no, here's the other one. Botany was a growing field.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
How did I miss that pun sensor is covered with dirt?
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Well, no, that's good. You want to pack some mud
on that thing.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
I know, but I don't like walking past stuff. I
like to take part, you know, and be involved in
the mix.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
So botany was a growing field, and floriography was, like
I said, among certain classes, you know, mainly upper class women,
because you know, it wasn't like the kind of thing
that you could really talk about openly in that class.
And this is one thing I haven't seen Emily yet
today because she got out of the house early. But
I wanted to ask her because she's, you know, like
(04:29):
a lot of GenEx women are obsessed with Jane Austen
stuff and sense and sensibility and all those series and
movies and books, and I wondered if she knew about
this or if they in those because I've never watched
any of them, if they were kind of pointed stuff out, like, oh,
he sent the flowers this way and that means this.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
But that's I mean, that's the Browni sisters and Jane
Austin used a lot of floriography to help kind of
develop their characters, which I guess, so I guess they did. Yeah,
they definitely did. And the readers at the time probably
would have picked up this. But floriography is it's become
so arcane and obscure that modern readers would not pick
up on it. But if you learn about floriography and
you start reading Jane Austin, apparently it'll show up.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Oh well, no, that's what I was wondering if in
the books and they said, like, oh, will he sent
an upside down thing which means blah blah blah.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Yes, yeah, they would do that. I found a quote
from Pride and Prejudice from Jane Austen.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Ooh, can you read it in character?
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Well, it's the narrator, so sure, I guess I can,
because the narrator sounds exactly like me. Yeah, but Elizabeth
Bennett is giving a flower to mister Darcy, and the
narrator describes she gave a red rose to tell him
that she loved him Red Rose, red red red, red
red Rose Rose Rose, red red Rose, red Rose, red Rose,
(05:50):
red red red red. And then in the i think
the first edition, the word red is just repeated over
and over for three pages before it just stops. In
a new chapter starts.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
That's so hot. Yeah, all right, I need to go
cool down. Should we take a break?
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Yeah? I think so. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
All right, we'll come back and tell you about a
lot of this what these coated flowers mean right after this.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
If you want to know, then you're in luck. Just
listen to h Suffus stuffus. No, so, Chuck, you mentioned
(06:38):
that I gave you a nosegay. Another great word for
a nosegay is a tuessy mussy, and floriography in the
Victorian Age started to get popular at the same time
that tuessy mussies and nosegays were popular too. And they're
really kind of small, short, tightly bound bouquets that you
would kind of wear, almost as like a booteneer or
a corsage. Okay, they were made of flowers and herbs,
(07:02):
so not just flowers, but herbs had their own meanings too,
so like rosemary was for remembrance and mint was for clarity.
Moss even had its own meaning charity or maternal love.
Throw a violet in there, maybe for modesty. If you
put all those together in a little tussy musty and
gave it to somebody, you would be saying something like,
(07:23):
I modestly ask you to clearly remember me with either
charity or maternal love your pick.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Yeah, which would be a very confusing message. It would
be paging doctor Freud on that one, for sure. So
the obviously, you know, the type of flower is gonna matter.
The color of the flower is gonna matter. Many messages
could be sent. If you wanted to send a message
of rejection or disappointment, it could be a yellow carnation
(07:50):
or a yellow rose. But if you send a yellow lily,
that means that you're just sort of over the moon
and walking on air.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Obviously, the red rose is going to mean I love
you you. White rose is purity, a yellow roses loss
of love, and a crimson rose is for morning with
mu are right?
Speaker 1 (08:09):
And I mean like that is just skimming the surface.
Just the color of different types of roses, right, or
different color roses the state that the flowers and mattered
a lot too. You may mention, I think of a
withered rose in the tussy mussy I gave you. If
you gave somebody just a plain white rose, you could
be saying, like, I think you're heavenly, you're very pure,
(08:30):
and I like that. But if the white rose was withered,
you were telling them that they made no impression on
you whatsoever, or that you think their beauty is fleeting,
so remember that. And then if it was dried, you
were saying, I would rather die than to give into
your advances because I care about my virtue. And I'm
sure you could be like, you know, if you gave
(08:51):
somebody a withered rose, would you'd be like, is this
dried or withered? What are you trying to stay? Here?
So I know how much was like in the beholder's eye?
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Yeah, yeah, I mean translation is important, and you know
we'll get to that here in a sec. But a
thornless rose means you've fallen in love at first sight.
Thornless crimson rose means you're mourning, because remember crimson rose
this morning, but you're mourning an unrequited love at first sight.
And also the context really matters like you know, you
(09:22):
obviously kind of know what's going on between you. It's
when you're getting these or you know you're you're seeking clarity,
but you you know there's an established thing kind of
happening here for your own context. So if you get
a hydrangea, it can be thanking the receiver for understanding,
or that you think they're frigid and heartless. So you
really got to kind of have a read on the
(09:43):
general air of the relationship.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Yeah, same with like petunias. You could be saying you
soothed me or I resent to you. So the context
definitely mattered. But the reason why like hydranges and peonies
and almost all of the flowers had multiple meanings was
not because they needed to pull double duty because we
didn't have enough flowers and enough colors. Like if you
put all those together, you have a mind boggling number
(10:06):
of combinations. So that wasn't it. The reason they had
multiple meanings was because there were many, many different floriography
books and essentially a lot of them just assign different
meanings to different flowers. Yeah, so when you gave somebody flowers,
especially if there wasn't a lot of context yet, you
were just hoping that you guys were working from the
(10:27):
same book.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Yeah, I mean, that's that's huge.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
I think there were ninety eight different guides just in
the United States alone that were circulating from eighteen twenty
seven to nineteen twenty three.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Not helpful at all. And then you know, I also
mentioned that they were presented upside down. That also matters.
If they are upside down, that's it basically says it's
opposite day. So I guess you're trying to sort of
maybe confuse if like if Mum is looking on and
sees these flowers, But it would seem like Mum would
know about opposite day too, So I'm not really sure.
(11:02):
You know why they would do that, Maybe to throw
somebody off the scent. Who knows. How the ribbon was
tied also matters. Tied to the left, it's the symbolism
is applied to the giver, Right, it's tied to the
right if it's in reference to the recipient.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Yeah, yeah, I know, this is how deep it kits.
It could also express a lot of negative meanings, and
I think that's what you were doing when you handed
a bouquet upside down. You'd have to be pretty sharp
to put a bunch of mean flowers in and then
hand it to the person upside down to let them
know you meant the opposite.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Yeah, but there's a lot of trouble to go through.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Right there. Were Like you could be talking about jealousy
with marigolds. You could be expressing distrust with lavender orange
lily straight up said I hate you. You could say
I feel deceived with snapdragons. You could declare war with
a flower called a tansy, which I hadn't heard of before.
But it's like a bunch a bunch of like small
(11:58):
yellow flowers to get there, unlike a single stalk.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Okay, I thought that might have been a misprint pansy,
but I literally looked at my computer keyboard and it
was like, nah, I bet it's that team the peer
pretty far apart.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Yeah, I just I didn't know that that flower existed,
but by goodness it does.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Also, accepting also mattered. So depending on which hand you
accepted the flowers with sent a message, which I guess would.
I mean, if you're handing them in person, you would know,
but if not, you had to have it relayed back
to you. Yeah, if you accepted with the right hand,
it was a yes. The left hand was a no.
If you held the bouquet upside down after getting it,
(12:36):
that's rejection. If someone gave you a wisteria, maybe like
asking for a dance at a dance, you would hold
it upside down with your left hand if you wanted
to say no, thank.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
You, right yeah, you were really saying I'm passing with
that because you're that's a double no, although the person
giving it could be like, is that a double negative?
Like a yes? Is it opposite day? So you could also,
as the receiver, send flowers in return too, like if
somebody actually sent you flowers or a bouquet with a
message and didn't physically hand it to you, you could
(13:09):
reply with flowers yourselves. Carnations came in handy for that.
If you sent a solid colored carnation, it meant yes.
A yellow carnation was a big fat no. A striped
carnation was letting them down a little easier, but it
was still a no. It said I'm sorry, but I
can't be with you.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
I wonder which flower meant like, you know, are you down?
Speaker 1 (13:33):
There was something like that out there. I guarantee you
I don't know which one, Yeah, but there was definitely something.
And then the last part. I asked you where you
were wearing your nosegay, and you said in the center
of your bodice, which meant I just want to be friends.
But if you had warned over your heart, Chuck, I
would have known that you were saying, I love you
right back, buddy.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Hey, I do love you right back, buddy. Just you know,
not like that.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
I understand. I took my shot. Yeah, I guess, then,
Chuck us short stuff is out, I think so. Stuff
you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
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Dateline NBC
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