Why do we call that painful leg cramp a charley horse? While no good answers are out there, we did find some pretty far-fetched ones, including a story about old night watchmen known as Charlies and their broken-down horses. But the term first pops up in baseball reports in the 1880s, and fits well into the history of colorful baseball language. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Charley Horse”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Amanda from La Mesa, California.
Amanda.
Hi, Amanda. Welcome to the show.
She who must be loved.
That’s what your name means.
I love her already.
How can we help you?
Well, I had a question about a word my mom used to use.
Charlie horse.
And what is a Charlie horse?
Oh, I take it to mean a cramp in the calf muscle.
Yeah, almost always.
Was she prone to these?
No, but I got them a lot when I was a kid, and that’s what they called them.
Oh, and you were probably confused as heck the first time she said it.
Oh, you have a charley horse.
Yes.
It never made much sense to me, so.
You were saying, I want to call me.
I was wondering where it came from.
My little charley horse.
Not the same.
Did you brush its hair?
Depends on whether calves are hairy or not.
So charley horse, that’s a tough one.
So you wanted to know where it came from?
Yeah.
He should eat more bananas.
Oh, the potassium helps?
Yeah.
Oh, I didn’t know that.
Yes, it does.
How about that?
I think she wants to know where the word comes from.
Yes.
Oh, yeah.
All that.
Thank you, Dr. Martha.
That’s right.
Well, nobody knows for certain the origin of Charlie Horse, but it shows up first in the 1880s in the language of baseball players.
It just kind of starts popping up in these newspaper reports of players that have got this problem.
They call it the Charlie Horse.
There are no good theories on the origin of Charlie Horst, but I want to share with you the best bad one.
All right?
And this is that old broken down horses used to be given to night watchmen who would make their rounds in cities and towns in the eastern part of the U.S. and in the U.K.
And both the horses and the watchmen tend to be older and retired and creaky at the joints and not spry at all.
And they might have a limp.
Now, these watchmen were called Charlies.
It was never a very common term.
And so, therefore, their horses that they rode would be literally the Charlie horse.
So if you have this cramp in your leg or some kind of knot in your muscle, then you might limp in the same way that a Charlie horse would walk.
That’s a theory.
Like I said, it’s the best bad theory about the origin of Charlie horse.
But we do know that it first pops up in the United States in the 1880s in the language of baseball players.
Okay.
Cool.
Interesting.
Yeah, it’s the best I can do for you.
All right.
Keep eating those bananas, though.
All right, I will.
Thanks for calling, Amanda.
Thank you, Amanda.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
You know, it’s lucky at all that we can never come up with theories for some of these words, right?
That’s a good one.
I hadn’t heard that one.
Yeah, it’s not bad.
The problems with it, of course, is that Charlie was never a very common term,
And the data that we would need to support the etymology is not really there,
And it’s a little bit of guesswork and hopeful thinking.
Well, interesting that it shows up with baseball players first.
Well, baseball language, we’ve talked about this, baseball language and sports writers and sports in general.
It’s a colorful profession.
And the standards of editing for the sports pages tend to be much laxer than for the entire rest of the paper,
Except for the Sunday style section of the New York Times, which is its own weird other tangent of non-news that’s not true.
I never understand that.
Very odd.
