All Ate Up

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Jules from Dowsborough, Indiana.

Well, welcome to the show. How can we help you today?

Well, thanks. I have been wondering about a phrase that I grew up with, which is adept.

And it’s used in a manner of being consumed by something.

And usually it’s used directed at a person or a situation.

Like for someone that over-decorates for Halloween or Christmas, we would say, well, they’re pretty ate up about decorating for Christmas.

But you pretty much leave off any extra.

You just say, they’re ate up.

Yes, I know this one.

And you grew up in Indiana?

I did, yeah.

And there are probably streets there where people are all ate up with putting all kinds of decorations on the house, right?

Oh, yeah.

A lot of people that are ate up.

This is a really interesting slang term.

I love it.

It’s almost dialect, but I think I’m going to leave it in the realm of slang because it changes so much depending who’s saying it.

I grew up knowing this in Missouri, and we usually meant if I said, boy, he was all ate up over the way that house sale went, it meant that he was upset and consumed, as you say, but consumed by the notion that things didn’t go perfectly.

So all of the different eight-ups that we have, if we can kind of come up with an umbrella definition, that means obsessed or even overwhelmed by the complexity of something, overcome, or even just tired out by something.

You might see a two-year-old at the end of a long day kind of weaving back and forth about ready to fall asleep in their footsteps.

And you might say, oh, he’s just eight-up, right?

And it’s time to put him to bed.

Yeah, so it’s basically consumed.

Yeah, on all the varieties of meaning of consumed, all the inflections and kind of nuances and connotations of consumed.

Yeah, but this notion has a long tradition.

I mean, Jane Austen wrote about somebody being ate up with pride.

Exactly.

And Shakespeare talked about having been eaten up with passion in Othello.

And now in the military in the United States, do you know anybody in the military perhaps?

I do. I have some family members.

Okay, in the Army and the Navy, I’m sorry, in the Army and the Air Force, they have versions of 8-Up which don’t quite jive perfectly, but still kind of fall under the umbrella term.

As I understand it, in the Army, if you’re 8-Up, it means you’re confused.

You’re just kind of dulled by circumstances.

And in the Air Force, and I know we have a lot of people in the Air Force who listen, it means that you’re dedicated to service, which means you are consumed by the idea of being the best that you can be at your job.

Not to take the Army’s slogan and apply it to the Air Force, but there you go.

And you would just say so-and-so is ate up, Captain so-and-so is ate up, or ate up with?

Yeah, something like that.

Sometimes it comes with the preposition afterwards, sometimes it doesn’t.

The gung-ho guy who’s out there doing his duty, and shoes are shined, and buttons are polished, and yay.

And then he retires and decorates his house with lots of Christmas lights.

Ate up with patriotism.

Could it maybe have originated, too, from being infested by something, like by bugs?

That’s a really good one, yeah.

I’ve been ate up by mosquitoes.

When I was talking about it, that’s kind of where we diverted to.

Really?

I love that.

The notion of… that idea of being eaten up by, you know, lice or having a tick.

And, you know, when you are experiencing that, that’s all you can think about.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like an itch.

That’s not bad.

That’s not bad.

I don’t know if Jane Austen had mosquitoes on her land, but it could be.

It jives perfectly, doesn’t it?

I think so.

All right, Jules, thanks for calling.

Okay, thanks a lot.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Thanks.

Bye.

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