John in Frisco, Texas, is puzzled by his dad’s phrase tougher than a boiled owl. Although it sounds unappetizing, the phrase has a fascinating backstory. In the 18th century, owls were associated with drunkenness, and often invoked in the phrase drunk as an owl. Among the many synonyms for “intoxicated” is the adjective stewed, which eventually was conflated with boiled. So a boiled owl is simply a “drunk owl.” The connection between owls and drunkenness may have to do with their glassy-eyed stare, the way they regurgitate undigested food, and the clumsy way they fly when startled. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Tougher Than, Drunker Than, and as Stewed as a Boiled Owl”
Hi there, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is John Bodley.
I’m calling you from Frisco, Texas, and I just had a question about a term that I heard when I was younger.
Great, John, we’d love to hear it.
So when I was a kid, my dad used to say, tougher than a boiled owl. And I’ve asked people if they’ve ever heard that before, and no one seems to know where it came from. So I thought maybe it was something that my dad made up.
When I talked to him, he said it was like a cooking term. So if, like, the meat you were eating was overcooked, it might be tougher than a boiled owl. He also said that it’s used to describe a person, like a strong person or somebody who was tough. So, like, oh, I know, John, that guy is tougher than a boiled owl.
So I’m just so curious to find out where that came from, and I need your help.
Oh, okay. Yeah, sure, we can help with that. So you learned this from your dad. Did he see where he learned it?
You know, he said that his dad, so my grandpa used to say it as well. That’s funny how these things get passed from generation to generation.
Yeah, and so I just never heard that before except from my dad and my grandpa. He’s got bits of the history. He’s picked out certain parts of it, and I’m going to connect those for you.
Owls are these strange creatures that pop up in myth and mystery and religion, as long as humans have been considering nature and their relationship to it. But I’m going to just kind of connect to around the 1700s. We start to see in English, although it may have happened in other languages too, owls being used in metaphors and similes connected to drunk or alcohol.
So drunk variations on drunk as an owl or drunk as a hoot owl or owl drunk. And even further back, there are associations of owls with drinking, not necessarily drunk. In the 1600s, there’s a little ditty from, oh, 1609 that goes, of all the birds that I ever see, the owl is the fairest in her degree. For all day long, she sits in a tree. And when the night comes, away flies she. Tee-wit, tee-woo, to whom drinkest thou? And it goes on and on. It talks about just how she ends up with a jolly red nose, meaning she’s been drinking.
So this idea of owls as being drunk connected to other adjectives meaning drunk. But one of them was stewed. And stewed happens to be a word that also is something you do to vegetables or to meat or other things that you cook. And you also boil stuff. So we’ve got a mishmash here of these adjectives then later being reapplied to the owl. So a boiled owl is a drunk owl.
So anyway, so it’s not boiled as in boiled in water at 212 degrees Fahrenheit, but boiled as in drunk.
Wow, that is so interesting. You know, I have heard it also as hotter than a boiled owl as well, and I thought that meant that you were mad, like you were hot as a boiled owl.
Yeah, the key is there that once an owl started being used in these metaphors, then people just started expanding all the different ways that you could be something as a boiled owl.
I’m just so relieved to hear this because I’ve heard, you know, madder than a boiled owl or feeling like a boiled owl. And I just always thought of this, you know, terribly awful smelly thing in the kitchen. But you’re telling me that it’s an owl that’s slurring its hoots and stumbling around. I love that.
The reasons you might think of an owl as being drunk are really interesting. There’s three different ideas here. One is it has to do with the glassy-eyed stare of an owl. They can stare at you without blinking. Some drunks look like this, right?
Oh, yeah.
And so to stare like a boiled owl has been a phrase at different points in English. And another one has something to do with the way they regurgitate the pellets of their prey, the indigestible bones and fur. Another one, too, is the way they behave in the middle of the day when they’re discovered by other birds, and they kind of fly erratically and clumsily because these other birds will mob owls and chase them out of the territory because they don’t want the owls to eat their young. And so the owls kind of fly awkwardly and weirdly, and they look like they’re flying drunk.
Oh, be darn.
Yeah.
Wow.
So there’s these three different contributing reasons why you might think of an owl as drunk or boiled. You know, that is so interesting. I have been wondering, you know, for many, many years where that came from. I just love your show, and I thought, if anybody knows, these guys can help me.
John, I’m so grateful that you called. This is the sound of a light bulb going on over my head. I’m really glad to hear this. So thank you, John.
All right. Take care.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
We’ll give you some wise old advice about language. Just give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send us an email. That address is words@waywordradio.org.
