Pop Your Clogs, Clever Clogs

Hello, welcome to A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Annie Kreisberg, and I live in Bend, Oregon.

Hi, Annie, welcome to the show.

What can we do for you, Annie?

Hi, thank you.

A number of years ago, I had the great fortune of living on a narrowboat in England.

And while I lived there, I picked up all kinds of amazing English slang.

And had just a great time learning the language,

Which was a surprise to me because I was moving from Texas there,

And I thought I spoke English, but I didn’t.

And one of the things that confounded me was that the English had two phrases that both had the word clogs in them.

So one of them was clever clogs, which people would say to you, and it’s kind of equivalent to smarty pants, except they would say it in a praising way, as normally when we say smarty pants here, it’s kind of disparaging.

And then the other was they would say, oh, he or she popped their clogs, which was a euphemism for dying, like kicking the bucket.

And by clogs, you mean the shoes?

Well, that’s what I’m assuming. That’s what they meant.

And also, since I lived on the waterways, there were narrowboats, and then there were also Dutch barges.

And I kind of associated clogs with the Dutch, and I wondered if there was any crossover from the boating culture or whatever.

Yeah, we can dispatch the clever clogs pretty quickly because there’s an older version of clever clogs, which is clever boots.

And it’s sort of the same idea as you said, that it’s like smarty pants, you know.

Right.

Clever britches is another version of that.

Those were around in the mid-19th century, and it was later that clever clogs came along.

And it has that nice alliteration to it, doesn’t it?

Oh, clever clogs.

Right.

Yeah, clever britches is funny because britches is a funny word, but it’s kind of hard to say.

Yeah.

And I’m interested that for you, clever clogs is completely positive.

Yeah, when they called me clever clogs, it never made me feel bad.

Okay.

Well, that’s interesting because—

I wonder if you were picking everything up.

It wasn’t like being called smarty pants on the playground.

It was like, oh, Annie, you’re such a clever clogs.

It was good affectionately to me when I heard it, so I just assumed that maybe it was always used that way.

I could be wrong.

Oh, that’s so funny because I’ve seen it used as a slightly derogatory description, you know, for somebody who’s a little too clever for their own good.

Clever clogs.

Maybe I’m not that clever.

Maybe I was only mildly clever.

And popping your clogs as a euphemism for dying is a little more murky, isn’t it, Grant?

Yeah.

I always think of The Wizard of Oz, actually.

Really?

I think of that moment where the house falls on the Wicked Witch of the East and her shoes come off.

But they’re not clogs, of course.

They’re the ruby slippers, and that sets the whole movie into motion.

Yeah, so the pop there is just about, well, Tony Thorne, the slang lexicographer,

He has a theory that the pop is a different pop, that it’s related.

It’s the pawn, as in to pawn your belongings, to sell them for money.

And the idea is if you pop your clogs, you’re dead and you no longer need your footwear.

And so now it’s being sold for money.

So if you pop your clogs, your stuff is just being sold down the street for a bit of cash.

Yeah, there are lots of euphemisms like that for when we die.

One of my favorites is he hung up his spoon.

You know, he doesn’t need his spoon anymore.

And people used to hang their spoons on the wall.

And it could be that getting rid of one’s clogs because you don’t need them anymore.

Is how they meant pop your clogs.

It’s not that old.

The pop your clogs dates to around the 1940s,

Maybe a little bit older than that.

Yeah.

And I kind of think of kicking that.

It certainly cracked me up when I heard it.

I was like, clog?

Like, why do you guys keep talking about clogs?

You know, it was just so strange.

The larger question we have to talk about here, Annie and Martha,

Is are we actually talking about the Dutch clog?

Yes, exactly.

And I’m not sure that we are.

I’m not sure that we are either.

No, we might be talking about the English clog,

Which is sometimes a different kind of shoe.

So the English were known for wearing a shoe called a clog,

Which could be a completely wooden shoe,

But it might also just be a regular shoe sold with wood,

Which is something that you might do seasonally.

You might do in the winter, particularly in the north of England or in Scotland,

You might at the right time of year get wooden sold shoes

In order to give you more traction or to provide more insulation from the snow and the ice.

Is it more associated with rustic folk?

Yes, definitely.

And also, yes, that’s the thing with the clogs.

To talk about clogs in a lot of different expressions is to refer to somebody as being a bit of a hillbilly,

If we might say in the United States, definitely rustic, a rube.

Oh, no. Now I’m rethinking getting called a clutter clog because I was such a rube.

I didn’t realize that they were making fun of me.

Well, it sounds like you made a good impression over there, ultimately.

You had a great time, right?

Oh, I had a great time.

And in fact, I started thinking about this because I just went back to visit people that I hadn’t seen for 16 years.

All my friends from the boatyard that I lived on.

And they’ve all come off the water now.

And they live all across the country.

So I actually did a road trip with my sweetheart from London to Wales and up to Edinburgh.

And stopped along the way and saw people.

That sounds lovely.

It was fabulous.

That does sound glorious.

Annie, thank you for sharing your memories and your words with us.

Absolutely.

Thank you so much.

This was so much fun.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

You know, when you travel, you come across all sorts of language in English and varieties of English and in other countries and other languages.

You know, this is a fun place to talk about that.

Share it with us.

Tell us your story.

Where did you go?

What did you learn?

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