Collywobbles

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, how are you?

Tigger Gray in Tallahassee, Florida.

I hear birds in the background. Must be a nice day in Tallahassee.

Oh, it’s lovely.

Yeah, I’m sitting on my front porch where I basically live.

Nice.

It’s lovely out here. What’s on your mind, Tigger?

Well, whilst making breakfast the other day, my wife and son were hanging out in the kitchen, and my wife was describing to us an operation she’d recently gone through on her thumb for arthritis, where the doctor had removed a bone and replaced it with a wire to keep the finger and thumb together.

At which point I shuddered and said out loud, oh, that just gave me the collywobbles.

And to which my son went, what? And Sarah, my wife, said, what?

I said, the collywobbles, you know, the collywobbles.

And they said, I’ve never heard of that word. And so I told them what it was, what I thought it was, and what I know it to be.

And Sarah immediately said, you ought to call A Way with Words.

Yes, you should.

All right. Tell us about you and Kaliwubbles. Are we hearing that you’re not from Tallahassee?

Right. I’m English originally. And ultimately, my aunt and my mom used to use it all the time to describe when they were, you know, upset in the tummy or more to the point when something makes you cringe.

Her describing that operation on her thumb totally made me cringe.

And did it make your stomach feel funny?

Oh, yes, absolutely.

It’s deep. It’s inside. It’s almost kind of like falling in love, but you’re going, wait a minute, this is not right.

So a negative butterfly is in the stomach.

Right, negative butterfly.

There you go. That would have easily explained it.

The willies or the heebie-jeebies.

Yep, exactly.

And molly grubs.

I’m really surprised that your family hasn’t heard this term. It’s been around since the early 19th century and generally means, well, gastrointestinal distress.

It might come from a combination of colic, as in colon, you know, a pain in your stomach, and the word wobble.

So colic and wobble together.

We’re not sure where this word comes from, but there are lots of variations of it, like golly wobbles, or I got the collie marbles, or the collar moggies.

But I’m kind of surprised. My body certainly wobbled when I heard her describe the operation.

Your golly certainly wobbled?

I was a little like, yeah, over here, too. I was like, a wire?

Yeah, really. Sarah’s American, you know, from Tallahassee, and my son was born here, Harrison.

And, yeah, it’s a case that they’ve not heard me say that. And I actually have an American accent, but when thinking and talking English, I become English again.

But that just popped right out in the middle of cooking breakfast.

I imagine that’s a fairly common occurrence in your house, where they all, like, hold you to account for your weirdness.

Well, without a doubt, they think I’m weird.

Yes, absolutely.

Thank you for calling. And, you know, I’ve got to say that these cross-cultural conflicts are always great fun for us.

So if you have any others, you and your family have these two different dialects crashing together, do call us, will you?

Absolutely.

All right, take care.

Bye-bye.

Thanks.

See you.

There’s a funny thing that happened in your house. I know that there is where somebody said something that nobody else understood, but they swore it was real.

We would like to sort that out with you because we are going to have answers or we’re going to try to have answers.

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