To Birdie, Baby Birding, Airsipping, and Other Water-Drinking Techniques

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is John from Orange County, California. How are you today?

All right, John. How are you doing? Welcome to the show.

I got a question that’s based out of where I’m from in Orange County here.

If I were to say, hey, will you let me drink out of your water bottle, but I’m not going to touch it to my lips. I’m just going to kind of let it flow into my mouth. What would you call that?

Oh, well, you’re asking languagey people. So we’re a little over-equipped for this one, John.

Right, right. And you’ve already told us that you’re from Orange County.

Right. Yeah, it’s just a thing that we know about. We know where you’re going with this, John. That’s all we’re saying.

Well, there’s kind of a strange phenomenon I’ve found that people outside of Orange County, at least that I’ve been able to ascertain, people outside of that, they call that action that, you know, flowing the water bottle out without touching your lips, they call that water falling.

Yeah. Whereas in Orange County, we would call that birdieing. Like, hey, can I get a birdie out of that? Will you give me a birdie for that? And I don’t know why that is.

I’ve found that I’ve asked people from Los Angeles County, San Diego County, and they say a waterfall that I ask, you know, friends, people I’ve grown up with. And, you know, they say birdie. And I’m wondering why that is. If you could give me some insight as to why there’s that kind of like regionalism.

So this, just to be clear, we’re talking about the touchless drink. So you’re holding the bottle, but you do not touch your lips to the mouth of it. And the water pours freely into your open maw.

Exactly. Sort of like your open maw is a little baby bird’s mouth. The posture that you’re taking when you do that is very much, Martha, right? Like a baby bird in the nest waiting for the worm to come from mama.

Yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting. And it’s not just you, John. I mean, you can go on TikTok and see lots and lots and lots of videos where people are polling their friends. Do you call it a birdie or do you call it a waterfall? And for some reason, Orange County seems to be very closely associated with using the term birdie for this.

We had a call about this, Grant, many, many years ago, and that was what we discussed. There are a few other expressions for this. Some people call it air sipping or airing. In the U.K. a lot of times, and in India, people will say sky. They’ll say, you know, I’m going to sky that drink. Sky me a drink, yeah.

Yeah, sky me a drink. And, you know, my favorite, though, of all of these is not birdie or waterfall or anything like that. It’s the French slang term for this. I got to share it with you.

All right. All right. Yeah. The buildup is tense.

Okay. I’m going to pour it into your ears without touching your ears. The French phrase is bois en wifi.

Oh, yeah. Drink a Wi-Fi.

Yeah. Drink in Wi-Fi, you know, because it’s not connected.

Yeah, it’s not connected. And also I’ve seen Bluetooth used in the same way.

Oh, really? In English as well, yeah.

Oh, there you go. In parts of Europe, they call it Wi-Fi or Wi-Fi or Bluetooth just because it’s touchless, wireless, no cables. It’s so picturesque, right? I love that one.

And I’m not really sure why Birdie got so closely associated with Orange County unless it started there.

Well, so many of those language questions, you know, the answer is nobody knows. It’s just a curiosity of language. But there is, John, right, a strong hiking culture in Southern California, and Orange County is part of that.

But it’s so weird that it’s just to be specific just to that one county when it’s surrounded by these other counties that are also rich with hiking tradition and culture.

Yeah, I would say here in San Diego, we do call it a waterfall, at least the people I know.

Yeah, absolutely, waterfalling.

Yeah. John, thank you so much for your time, and be safe out there. Don’t step in on any rattlers.

Try not to when I’m hiking. Thank you so much, guys.

All right. Take care. Bye-bye.

All right. Take care. Bye now.

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