John in Seguin, Texas, says his mother used to use a phrase that sounded like colder than a well-digger’s clavicle. Why would she use that term, if that’s what it was? Clavicle comes from a Latin word that means little key. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “”Colder Than” Similes”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, Martha and Grant. How are you today? This is John Seban from Seguin, Texas.
Hi, John. Welcome to the show.
Well, I’ve got a question that dates back to something I heard 60 years ago or more.
In cold weather, my mother would say, it is colder than a well digger’s.
And she didn’t finish that the way most people would think.
She would say something like claddicle or calabicle.
And I don’t really remember exactly how she pronounced that.
That’s close.
Don’t know how to spell it.
And I never asked her what it meant, but I knew what the whole expression meant.
It meant wear layers.
Wear layers?
Yeah.
Wear layers.
So it’s super cold outside, and she’s making a comment, and she says, it’s colder than a well digger’s, and it sounds like clavicle?
Right.
And do you think she meant the bone, the bone that’s kind of at your shoulder?
No, I mean, I rather doubt that.
So I thought this was probably something she was substituting for a well digger’s rear end, to be gentle about it.
Well, there is, because the standard expression is colder than a well digger’s rear end, only usually it’s a crasser term than rear end, right?
Correct.
Although, if you dig around, no pun intended, you’ll dig around, you’ll find, the reason I think she might actually have been saying clavicle, I don’t know of any examples of that, but some people have said colder than a well digger’s knee or colder than a well digger’s belt buckle or colder than a well digger’s elbow.
So there are other kind of things on the body that have been used in this way.
I just can’t imagine where she would have picked that up.
Well, maybe she just had a good ear for language.
Sometimes people read it in the newspaper or something or heard it on the radio.
Yeah, or maybe she just wanted to mess with people’s expectations, that they were expecting the naughty thing, and then she just throws in an anatomical term, clavicle.
She would have enjoyed that.
That’s a nice mix of registers, which is something I always appreciate when the low and the high meets in slang.
Right.
Sometimes people will add on the end of that, colder than a well digger’s behind in the Yukon or the Klondike, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, or January.
Well, this was in rural Kansas, and so I don’t know if it was a regional thing.
Yeah, well, if another listener knows about that, we’d love to hear about it.
Maybe somebody else used that term.
Yeah, maybe somebody else has heard a word that sounds like clavicle but isn’t clavicle.
Colder than a well digger’s something.
Fill in the blank.
Yeah, I’m sure we’ll hear about it.
Not bum, not rear end, not derriere.
Yeah, if you know one, call us 877-929-9673 or send it to us an email, words@waywordradio.org.
Well, thank you very much for considering my question.
I certainly enjoy your show.
Thank you, John.
We really appreciate your call.
Good day.
All right, take care.
Stay warm.
By the way, the expression is probably older than the 1940s, but that’s the earliest that I know of it.
Yeah.
Colder than a well digger.
Of course, there are so many expressions about colder than an X is Y.
Than this or that.
And a lot of them are naughty, and we can’t say them on the air or won’t say them on the air.
Yeah.
I wonder if it was clavicle.
And, of course, I have to talk about the origin of clavicle, which comes from a Latin word that means little key.
And you might think, well, why would your collarbone, that’s your collarbone, it doesn’t really look like a key.
But it looks like the kind of key that was used in ancient Greece with doors.
It’s more elongated and subtle like that, like the clavicle in your shoulder.
Little keys, the clavicle.
Yeah, there’s a beautiful passage in the Odyssey where somebody closes a door and locks it with a clavicle.
Oh, interesting.
I heard this expression from my elderly grandfather as a kid. If the ladies were around it was “colder than a well-digger’s clavicle,” but if it was only the fellows in the room it was “colder than a well-digger’s testicle.” The meter is the same, when he would say it in front of the ladies, he would wink at the boys. From a practical standpoint it would make sense that the lower body part would be more likely to get wet and cold and to be a cause of concern.