Birdie That Drink

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Grant, let’s say it’s a hot day and you’re drinking from a water bottle and I’m really thirsty.

What if I said, hey, can I get a swig?

I’ll birdie.

I don’t know.

What is that?

It means I’ll drink the water without putting my mouth to your bottle or your glass or whatever.

Got you.

So to stop the spread of germs.

Yeah.

Oh, nice.

Although you’re still getting my backwash.

Right?

I hadn’t thought about that.

There should be another word for that.

But wait a second.

So there’s a term for taking a drink out of someone else’s water bottle without putting your lips on the container.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You might hand the bottle to me and say, make sure you birdie it.

Make sure you birdie it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I did an informal poll of my friends.

And the other term that’s used a lot is water falling.

Water falling.

Yeah.

Just pouring it into your mouth rather than drinking.

Yeah.

My friend Elwin is a champion water faller.

He’s got a reputation.

How do you get a reputation for waterfalling?

I guess you do it a lot.

But who knew there were terms for this?

I only learned these terms recently, which is why I’m bringing it up.

There’s probably more than two.

There are.

Some people call it baby birding, and some people call it airing.

Like, not air on the side of…

So there’s an air gap between your lips and the mouth of the bottle.

Nice.

That makes perfect sense.

Yeah.

It’s the kind of thing that you think that should have a term for.

Yeah, that should have a term.

And I love that these arose kind of independently, and there are probably more.

And we definitely want your calls and emails about your terms for drinking out of a bottle without putting your lips on it.

877-929-9673.

And you can always email us, words@waywordradio.org, and talk to us on Twitter @wayword.