Jean in Thetford, Vermont, remembers using the term cherry bump to refer to that moment when part of a backyard swingset leaves the ground for a moment, then lands with a thump. Another term for it is cherry bomb, which can also be used for a variety of similarly jarring moments on a seesaw or tire swing. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Cherry Bumps on a Swing”
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.
We heard from Jean Gerber in Thetford, Vermont, who wrote to ask about the term cherry bumps.
She says it’s what my family and friends called it when we swung hard and high in the swing set.
And the whole swing set would lift up off the ground in the front.
And two of its four legs would lift a few inches and then bump back into the ground.
And this was in the 1960s in Cleveland.
And she says, I have no idea why we called it cherry bumps, but we all knew what it meant.
Oh, yeah.
The kind of the backyard rusty swing set, right?
That wasn’t really bolted down or wasn’t set in concrete.
Yeah.
And the ones you always tried to do the loop-de-loop where you went all the way around and never quite made it.
Oh, my gosh.
That, yeah.
Yeah, I had some bruises to show for that.
So that’s bump, B-U-M-P, not B-O-M-B, right?
Right.
But I have seen some people kind of, I’m not 100% sure it’s connected, but connect it to cherry bomb,
Like the little round red firework that you buy near Independence Day, the one that makes that really satisfying explosion.
Right.
But there are other cherry bumps as well.
There’s the seesaw ones.
There’s one where you jump off and you let the other person slam to the ground.
There’s a seesaw one where you get off and you push your end of the seesaw up and down or the teeter-totter.
So the other person is kind of flying up and down with her arms failing like a marionette.
And then there’s a tire swing one where when you swing out over the lake or the river on a tire swing or a rope swing,
It catches a knot or a branch and you’re kind of suspended there momentarily.
And that’s the cherry bump.
And you’re kind of, you’re just kind of hanging there for just a second suspended and you don’t know what’s going to happen.
It’s kind of freaky.
So that’s a cherry bomb too.
Yeah.
So all these different cherry bombs.
So I guess the cherry bump in general is just like this moment of panic, like, what’s going to happen to me?
Yeah.
That sensation where your stomach sort of goes up into your throat.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
It’s almost the same feeling as when you tilt back your chair too far and you think you’re going to fall.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That moment.
The cherry bump.
Well, I’m betting that other people had terms for that.
Sure.
Let’s talk about swing set language or playground language.
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