A thick blanket or stack of blankets is also called a pallet. The Dictionary of American Regional English says this term is most common in the South Midlands — such states as Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri. In the New American Standard Bible (John 5:8) Jesus says to a man who’s been incapacitated for nearly 40 years, “Pick up your pallet and walk.” The term comes from French, where a pallet was a thick, woven mat of hay to lie on. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Pallet”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, Martha. Hi, Grant. This is Angela from Shell Lake, Wisconsin.
Hi, Angela. Welcome to the program.
Well, I’m originally from Texas, and I come from a very large family. And we were always having sleepovers as kids, cousins coming over. And whenever one of my cousins would spend the night, we would make a pallet for them on the floor for them to sleep on.
And the other day I was with a group of friends here in Wisconsin, and I mentioned that I put a little boy that I was babysitting on a pallet to sleep. And they looked at me puzzled and asked what I was talking about. I said, you know, a pallet, you know, when you sleep on the floor with blankets. And none of them knew that definition for the word. They had only heard of shipping pallets, and that’s why they were looking at me puzzled. They thought I was putting the little boy on wooden boards for his nap.
You’ll never get another babysitting gig.
Yeah, really?
Right.
Well, that might be a good thing, though. This word was so common for me growing up that I never imagined that someone would not know or use it in this sense. And my husband, who has lived all over the U.S., said he knew what it meant but had not used it himself. So I was wondering if you could please let me know in what areas this word is used regularly. And in the areas that it is not used, what do they say? Because when I asked my friends about it here, they said they just say put blankets on the floor.
Right, yeah.
Yes, definitely not used very much in Wisconsin, is it?
No.
What part of Texas do you come from?
I’m mostly from around the Dallas area.
Okay, very good. I grew up with pallet as well, and I remember we had five kids in my family, and when the Barretts came over, you know, and they were going to spend the night, it was always a big to-do because seven total family members, where are you going to find them a place to sleep? And at one of my grandmother’s house, inevitably, I would end up sleeping under the dining room table because it was the only place for me, right? Like in between the chairs.
That means you wouldn’t be stepped on.
Yeah, and I wouldn’t be stepped on. Well, sometimes there’d be a poker game going on on the table above me. But I would be sleeping on a pallet, which would be blankets, a layer for softness, right? And a pillow if there was a spare one, and then a blanket on top of you.
So, yeah, sure. Palette’s very familiar. If you look at the map in the Dictionary of American Regional English, you will be pleased to find that this word is mostly common in what the dialectologists call the South Midlands. This basically means Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri basically kind of is the northern border, but not very much in the north at all. North of Missouri, not really. North of the Ohio River Valley, not really. Not very much in the West, certainly very little in the Northeast. So it’s the Southern states. That’s the, you know, Texas and Louisiana and Oklahoma and Georgia and so forth.
Well, it’s interesting because my first exposure to it was going to Southern Baptist Church when I was little. And in the book of John, I think it’s the fifth chapter, there’s a famous story about a guy who’s been incapacitated for 38 years. And Jesus says to him very famously, pick up your pallet and walk. And that’s just burned into the memory of a lot of people, I think, in the South in particular. And so this kind of underscores the background of this word. It comes from older French words meaning straw or straw bed. It has to do with literally making a bundle of straw. Sometimes you would twist it a little bit or kind of push it together the way that you might put a deck of cards together so that it kind of interleaves. And so you get something firm and you won’t fall through the straw to the floor. But that’s your palate. That was the old style palette. And, of course, we don’t really have straw much these days, so we use blankets and quilts and so forth.
So, Angela, you’re not a big weirdo.
Oh, wonderful. I guess it would depend who you ask, though.
No, yeah, palette’s great. And I think for me, it definitely brings memories, strong memories of family get-togethers, of that feeling of kind of making do when you’re a kid. It’s always kind of, there’s a novelty to it.
Oh, it’s almost like camping in the house. There was something really pleasant about it.
Yeah, put a blanket over the chairs.
Yeah, building a pallet and having a sleep in a strange place with strange family around you. It was good.
That’s cool. All right, thanks for calling, Angela.
Well, thank you. You guys have a wonderful day.
You too.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
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