White owl, whispering kettle and slop jar are all dialectal terms for the chamber pot, the container kept under the bed before indoor plumbing became common. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Chamber Pots”
Grant, I was digging through the new digital version of the Dictionary of American Regional English, and I came across a lot of terms for an object that used to be my grandmother’s house that fascinated me.
We didn’t have one in our house, but she had one in her house.
Now, let me see if you can guess what it is.
Okay.
Here are some of the terms for it from around the country.
A Jimmy John, a white owl, a whisper in kettle, a thunder mug, a slop jar.
Is this the, it goes under the bed?
Yes, the gazunda.
The gazunda.
Yeah, yeah, the chamber pot.
The chamber pot.
Whisper in kettle.
Who knew?
Yeah, for a minute I thought maybe it was the can in the refrigerator that keeps the bacon grease.
There should be a word for that.
Did you grow up with that?
I grew up with that.
Folgers coffee.
Was that what you had?
It was always a coffee can.
Yeah, you just poured it in there.
My mother was grossed out by it, but my father is a country boy, and he’s like, this is how it’s done.
You put the grease in there so you can use it later.
No, there are dozens of terms for chamber pot in this dictionary, and you can just call them up in two seconds.
That’s what I love about this digital version of the dictionary.
It’s great.
And like we said before, there are 100 entries for free on the website, and you can browse the head words, and there’s tons of background information at daredictionary.com.
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