A Clabberhead Is Pulp-Brained

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Trevor Woods. I’m calling from Greenville, South Carolina.

Greenville. Well, we’re glad to have you. What’s up, Trevor?

So I had a phrase I was wondering about. This is something I’ve heard from my grandfather, typically used in regards to talking about drivers making stupid mistakes or, you know, someone he’s not too happy with, and it’s the term clabberhead.

And I’d always wondered where that came from.

And it’s not a word I’ve heard anywhere else.

So I was just calling, trying to figure out what the roots of that were, where it came from.

Clabberhead.

And how did he use it?

What was happening when he said it?

You know, a driver, you know, turns into somewhere, someone makes a stupid mistake or does something reckless.

And it’s just, you know, calling that individual a clabberhead.

So it’s impolite, but not the worst sort of impolite.

Exactly. It’s like an O for a fool.

Yeah, exactly. Oaf. Oh, good word. O-A-F.

So you know what clabber is, I guess.

Yes. Isn’t it the part that kind of settles on top of milk?

Yeah. Yeah. It’s the sour part. It thickens or it curdles.

And you can use this in recipes or you can discard it.

But generally, it’s the fatty part that starts to turn and be useful.

And it comes to English from Irish and before that Gaelic.

And a Gaelic word meaning mud, actually, M-U-D.

Oh.

Yeah.

But it’s part of a, I don’t know if you are old enough to remember,

But there used to be another person on public radio talking about language.

That was John Ciardi, C-I-A-R-D-I.

And in one of his books, Good Words to You.

Now, he was a poet, but he also loved to explore language.

And in this book, he has a whole list of these related words, a class of words.

So you have clabberhead, but you also have chowderhead, churnhead, puddnhead, meathead, mushhead.

And the idea with all of these is that your brain is like the first part of those compounds, that it’s just a mush.

It’s like a muddy, messy mush, and basically you’re not a clear thinker.

That makes sense.

Yeah.

And the clabberhead version goes back to at least the 1860s.

The Dictionary of American Regional English has an updated entry on the website at dare.wisc.edu at Wisconsin.

And so it’s got a good history to it.

But it’s always, it’s the kind of thing that you could get away with saying on the floor of Congress.

Yeah, I was going to say, it seems pretty mild to me, Claverhead.

Oh, yeah, definitely mild.

I’ve heard worse.

Oh, yeah.

Especially in traffic.

I’ve been called worse.

Yeah, so it’s just sour milk.

Yeah, thank you for that information.

Now I know I can get away with saying it more places, I reckon.

Yeah, I was going to say, have you picked it up?

I have. I have.

Only in the past couple of years, though, because, you know, being a little more grown up and in public places, I work with the public.

I work for the National Park Service.

Sometimes, you know, you get a little frustrated working with the public.

And that’s something I’ll be able to say to my coworkers in a jesting way.

And, you know, can kind of describe some of the folks you may encounter.

All right. Well, Trevor, thanks for your call. We appreciate it.

Yeah, and thanks for your work, too.

Thank you all very much.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, don’t be a puddinghead. Give us a call, 877-929-9673.

It’s toll-free in the United States and Canada, and you can call or text.

Again, 877-929-9673.