All Get-Out

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is John Vincenzo from East Hinton, New York.

Hi, John, welcome to the show.

Thanks.

Well, there’s this phrase that I was always curious about. I only heard it in one part of the country, and then somebody used it recently, and I asked her, what does that mean? She said, I don’t know. And it’s as cold as all get out.

Meaning what?

Meaning it’s really cold. I was on this bike trip in Oregon, and one night it got really cold, and everybody was saying it was all cold as all get out. And all those people were either from Northern California or from Oregon. And then I used it for a little while, and then people made fun of me.

They did!

I stopped saying it, and then a friend of mine said it a few weeks ago, and I thought of it. And I said to her, do you know what that means? And she said, I guess it just means it’s cold. But I’m like, yeah, but let’s all get out.

That’s interesting that you were made fun of. I thought that was fairly widespread.

It is. When it’s cold in New York, we say things about how cold it is, but never all get out. The things that we say, I don’t think I could say on radio.

Yeah, I was just thinking of a couple of those.

This body part and that body part, freezing.

Yeah, right. And places and actions.

Yeah. We understand each other, John.

Yeah, you’re speaking the same language. I can hear this.

That’s funny. I remember the shock of hearing cold as all get out.

You do?

Yes, absolutely. I grew up in Kentucky, John, and I moved to Florida when I was in my teens for a little bit. And somebody said, it’s cold as all get out, which was probably, you know.

You know, that’s actually where my friend is from. She’s from Florida.

Oh, really? Very interesting.

But I do remember the shock of hearing that for the first time. I just thought, wait, I mean, was there a skip in the record or what happened? Because it just, it doesn’t make any sense, right?

It doesn’t.

Right.

Yeah.

What I understood from reading the slang dictionaries on this, there’s two theories and one of them I really like. And that is if something gets out in front of everything else like its kind, like today is cold as all get out. It gets out in front. It’s the winner of all cold days. It is like a pack of dogs at the track, right? It’s literally getting out in front. I liked that theory a little bit. It’s still very weird and doesn’t seem to work well in the syntax of English, which is why it’s so odd.

That’s the odd thing about it.

But the other theory was proposed by Farmer and Henley, these two slang lexicographers. Their idea is that it’s actually two expressions combined. And I really like this. So you have, well, doesn’t that beat all? And then you have, and it sounds very modern, but it’s actually very old. Then you have, get out! As an expression of disbelief. And their idea is that it’s a combination of doesn’t that beat all and get out. So it sounds like doesn’t that beat all get out. And then you have all get out.

All right.

So that’s a theory. But the surprising thing here actually on the side is that get out is actually much older than we think it is.

Get out.

Like get out of town or get out of Dodge.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We say get out of here a lot.

Get out of here.

Forget about it.

Forget about it.

Exactly. Did they say that in East Hampton? I thought they were more refined out there.

Well, yeah. I grew up in New York City.

Okay, there we go.

Okay, and then you got out.

Yeah, then I got out.

So, John, that’s about as much as we can do on that one.

All right.

Well, thank you very much.

Thanks for calling, John. Much appreciated.

Take care.

Thanks a lot.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Granger, are there other words and expressions like that that have been formed that way with the collision?

That’s the problem with this. This is why John was right on the button to call about this because it’s so weird. It just, to all get out.

Yeah, I’m trying to remember another. There’s one, and we’ve talked about it quite a while ago, and it’s even rarer, much rarer, and that is to who laid the rail.

Oh, yeah. That’s like, boy, she was just eating those mashed potatoes to who laid the rail.

Yes, I was. It means that she was eating them a lot.

Were you looking in my window?

What are you talking about?

I have cameras.

But again, it’s another one of those where the idiom is unparsable.

Yeah, it makes no sense.

You’ve got to take it as a unit.

Yeah.

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