2025-01-13
53 分钟You're listening to Away With Words, this show about language and how we use it.
I'm Grant Barrett.
And I'm Martha Barnett.
We heard from Amanda Fair in Evansville, Indiana, and she writes,
I saw my parents over the weekend and my dad used a phrase that I hadn't heard in a while.
And when he said it, I actually had to take a step back and think about what he was talking about.
My entire childhood, they called our garbage disposal George.
I also refer to our garbage disposal as such for most of my life,
but when I moved out I fell away from it.
As far as I know, they didn't have a disposal with a brand that was similarly named,
but they used it as a proper noun and a verb,
like, just put it down George, or, I'm done,
you can George it, or, we need to run George, it has a smell.
Make sure you run cold water when you turn on George.
Amanda says she still chuckles when she thinks about it,
but she's curious whether this might be, say,
a small German family inside joke,
and if there are any other strange names that people call their household objects.
So they named their garbage disposal, George,
like is the monster under the sink eating their refuse.