Brodie

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, how are you?

Hi, I’m doing fine. Who’s this?

This is Lynn. It’s good to talk to you, Martha. I’m a big fan of your show.

Oh, yay. Yay. And where are you calling us from, Lynn?

I’m calling you from Philadelphia.

Philadelphia.

Welcome to the show, Lynn. How can we help you?

Hi, well, I’m calling about a word. I thought it was everywhere in Philadelphia, and I’ve now run it by my family. Never heard of it before, but everybody I went to high school with is familiar with it.

I was in the car, and it’s extremely hot that day, and I was getting a ride to the train station from my dad, and he had a cold bottle of water.

And I said, are you going right back home after this?

And then took the bottle of water and said, Brody.

And he looks at me and goes, what does that mean?

And I go, that just means when you kind of pilfer something, you take it, but it has to be something pretty insignificant, like a pen or a lighter.

No one would say, you know, I brodied, you know, I got my car brodied.

You would say, oh, somebody brodied my pen.

Right.

And I’m wondering where that comes from.

So it’s kind of like a yoink, right?

Yes, that would be another good word for it.

Exactly.

Yoink.

Yoink.

And Lynn, when you do it, do you announce it?

Do you say brody as you’re taking it?

Yes.

No, yeah.

As I picked it out of the cup holder, I went, brody.

And he goes, what the hell is that?

So your theory is that this use of brody occurred only in your high school.

Well, no, because I went to a high school that’s not a local high school.

It kind of brought people in from all around the city.

So I’m thinking it must be from a specific part of Philadelphia.

Could be, could be.

I have a couple things to tell you about this term, no firm answers, but listen to this.

First, it shows up with three different spellings on Urban Dictionary and on this website called the Online Slang Dictionary.

These are both dictionaries where people contribute their own slang.

And almost all of them, except for one, come from people in Philadelphia.

So there’s some evidence there that it’s Philadelphia-centric.

We kind of have an evidence problem here.

We can’t say for certain that it isn’t used anywhere else, but it is telling that the citations, there are no other citations from other places.

As far as what neighborhood, there’s not enough evidence on any of these.

I do find it popping up in Hip Hop lyrics.

Go to RapGenius and search for a variety of spellings of Brody, B-R-O-D-Y, B-R-O-D-I-E, B-R-O-A-D-I-E, and you’ll find it popping up in a bunch of songs.

I was just about to say, Grant, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it written down, but I know I’ve heard it in songs.

Yeah, and it’s really interesting.

And they’re almost all, as far as I can tell, Philadelphia hip-hop artists.

Almost all of them.

Their name will be like Philly Star or something like that.

We’re coming to you live from 215.

Nice!

I don’t know exactly how this came about, but I’ve got another theory.

And bear with me, this is pure speculation, and I’m probably wrong, I’m going to share it with you anyway.

Brody is also sometimes used as an extended form of bro, meaning brother.

So he’s my Brody, right?

And you have this relationship with your bros, with your Brodies, where you’ll do things like bum a cigarette or borrow the lawnmower or he’s got a hat that you really like.

You’re all going out.

You’re going to wear it, something like that.

And so maybe when you Brody something from somebody, you’re treating them like a bro.

You’re just assuming because they’re such a good bro, you can snag it.

I’d never heard that.

That’s a good theory, though.

Yeah, probably wrong, but there you go.

That makes sense.

You know, it’s funny.

There are a lot of other Brodies in slang.

Like there’s Brody, which is a jump from a high place.

There’s a Brody, which is any kind of stunt that happens from a high place, especially if you fail.

There’s Brodies, which are donuts, like where you’re in a car and you’re driving around in circles.

And police have Brodies, which are not donuts, but they’re really fast U-turns, usually with the tires squirreling so they can turn around quickly and go in the other direction.

Oh, that’s a Brody, too.

Yeah, that’s a Brody.

Oh, I’ve never heard that one.

I’ve heard it used as just an inconvenient situation, like we walked all the way to the wrong end of the subway station and it turns out that door is locked.

Brody.

Oh.

And we’re going to walk back.

Oh, so it’s a little—

That’s really cool.

That’s a really slow U-turn.

I’ve never heard that one.

But anyway, there we go.

A little bit of evidence showing that the Brody, meaning to yoink or to take something small and insignificant, probably is from Philadelphia.

All right.

Well, hey, thanks a lot.

I really appreciate it.

I’m a big fan of your show.

Thanks for calling.

Thank you.

I really appreciate it.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, call goes out to Philly.

What can you tell us about this particular use of Brody?

Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or email us, words@waywordradio.org.