What Does the Expression “Another Country Heard From” Mean?

Hi there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Laura calling from Dallas.

Hey, Laura, welcome to the show. What can we do for you?

Well, thank you so much. I’m really excited.

I have a question about a phrase that I’ve been hearing a lot. My parents say it, and my mom said my grandma said it as well, and it is another country heard from.

And what context would you hear this in?

Well, I have a 10-month-old daughter, and so she’ll be, you know, kind of playing quietly and all of a sudden she’ll start babbling or talking and my mom will say, oh, another country heard from, or my same with my little baby cousin, he’ll be fast asleep. And all of a sudden he’s awake and talking and it’s okay, another country heard from.

So it’s when somebody just kind of, somebody blurt something out, they were unexpectedly speaking and you hadn’t expected them to put in any input at all.

Exactly. Yes. It almost is like their way of acknowledging the baby. It’s usually towards the babies, but like that they have joined the conversation and it’s kind of like a, it seems like a welcome.

Yeah. Okay. Have you ever heard them say it in a dismissing way to an adult? Like somebody gives an unwanted opinion or gives an opinion where they weren’t asked for an opinion?

Not really dismissing, but more of my younger sister, if we’re all here together and maybe she sleeps later than everyone else. And then she will slowly come down the stairs after everyone is already, you know, talking and having breakfast, then she might get, oh, another country heard from, like, it’s coming down now, you finally decided to join us.

Sometimes it can be that as well.

Yeah, that’s a good use. I like that one.

She’s all, where’s the coffee?

You’ll sometimes also hear it if somebody breaks wind or burps, sometimes you’ll hear somebody say that in response to that.

Yeah.

Okay.

Another country heard from.

But you’ll also hear another county heard from, without the R, C-O-U-N-T-Y. And that actually was the original form going back to 1868.

So it’s got a long history.

Now, I’m going to throw a bunch of stuff here at you, so bear with me, okay?

Okay.

The expression had a burst of popularity in the 1876 presidential election. Now, this was when Samuel J. Tilden was against Rutherford B. Hayes, and they had this neck-and-neck campaign. And even the election tally, after all the votes were cast, was so close that the ballot recount, when it was reordered, was like a county-by-county thing. And some of the far-flung counties were very slow to report.

So when the newspapers reported on the ballots slowly coming in, they would headline these little blurbs another county heard from with the results from that county. So everyone would keep up.

So this was in the newspapers at the time. However, even though a lot of books will tell you that this expression comes from that election, it does not come from that election. Although that election may have firmly, kind of like permanently put it into the lexicon because that expression existed before that election. It appeared before that election in ads and editorials, letters, headlines, and so forth.

And it always is like you’ve used it. It’s always like, okay, here’s an opinion. Here’s somebody spoke up that we weren’t expecting to hear from. Or sometimes it’s kind of dismissively used. That’s why I asked about that. Like, here’s somebody that we don’t care about with a thing that they insisted on saying. In newspapers, it’s like letters to the editors. Like, here’s somebody with an off-the-wall opinion that we decided to print just so we could make fun of them. You know, that sort of thing.

And they’ll title it another country heard from. I’m sorry, another county heard from. But somewhere around 1900 or so, it starts to switch to another country heard from. I don’t know why, but my theory is, and Martha, I don’t know what you think about this, but my theory is this is when the United States started to be a little more worldly. And we started to get more international news in our newspapers. And another county heard from started to disappear from popular speech. And you just don’t find it that much anymore.

And you also will see variants like another city heard from or another ward heard from, W-A-R-D. A ward is a voting district in a city. Anyway, that’s what we know.

So 1868. Every time this comes up, Martha and I both like furiously look at all the old databases to see if there’s anything new.

There never is.

There never is. We can never find it earlier than 1868. I look desperately, but I can never find any earlier than that.

Interesting. Thank you so much. That’s great.

Yeah. We were happy to hear from your country. So thank you for calling.

Oh, thank you so much. Thank you.

Take care now. Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

And we would be happy to hear from your county or country too. 877-929-9673. That number is toll-free in the U.S. and Canada. And if you’re anywhere else in the world, you can email us, words@waywordradio.org. We will try to get people on from anywhere in the world, believe it or not. And you can talk to us on Twitter @wayword.