Coming Down the Pike

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Grant and Martha.

This is Lucy Frick.

I’m calling from Indianapolis.

Hi, Lucy.

Hey, Lucy.

What’s up?

Well, I called because I had never heard the phrase coming down the pike until I got to law school. And then I heard it like only in reference to Supreme Court precedent. And it seems like such a pedestrian phrase to use to refer to new Supreme Court law. And so I’ve since asked around. And I’m sitting here in my office with two of my colleagues, and they had never heard that phrase. But we’re all in the legal profession. So that’s the long and the short of it. I want to know where that phrase comes. And do I only hear it referred to the Supreme Court, or is that something that really is only used in the legal context?

Really? You never heard the expression coming down the pike in any other context before adulthood?

Never.

Wow.

Isn’t that strange?

That’s interesting.

That’s very. I can understand what it means, but, yeah, I had never heard it until I went to law school. And it means to you it means?

There’s some new case law coming out from the Supreme Court. You know, right now, XYZ case is up at the Supreme Court, and we can expect that issue to become or that opinion to be coming down the pike pretty soon.

Right.

Interesting.

And what is your understanding of the word pike?

Well, I assume a pike is a road where someone drives.

Right.

Good.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, that’s interesting that you never heard it in any other context, coming down the pike. And then since I called you all, I’ve been asking around both to people who are in the legal community and people who are not in the legal community. And either people hadn’t heard it before or they had also heard it in the legal context.

Boy, that’s really interesting. Because there is nothing particularly legal about this term at all, unless you’re all reading the same website where the person writing the stories loves to use the phrase.

Yeah.

It’s just general American English.

Yeah, and it’s a reference to the longer word is turnpike, and that has to do with an old toll road back in the early 1900s. A turnpike was a road that had actually a pike going across it where you’d have to stop and pay a toll. And so the shortened version of that is pike, but coming down the pike, I’ve heard it in all kinds of contexts. And a pike is a pole or a stripped log or a thin, long branch.

Right, right. Grant’s explaining my arm motion, which you can’t see. So people can do martial arts with pikes, for example.

Yeah. Got it. Yeah. But in terms of legal combat, I don’t know. Legal combat.

Yeah. It sounds like just sort of a casualism injected into your profession.

Yeah, seriously. There’s nothing particularly legal about it. You will find this in all arenas of American life, both professional and non-professional.

Well, it’s interesting, too, because a lot of people confuse it as coming down the pipe.

Yeah, P-I-P-E.

Oh, right.

Like a system of pipes, and that somehow seems more applicable to Supreme Court decisions coming down through the pipeline. We’re distantly removed from pikes now.

Right.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah, but not so much from pipes. But P-I-P-E seems to make a lot more sense, so people have reanalyzed what they think they’re hearing.

Yeah, something in the pipeline, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, of course.

But, you know, we have a lot of attorneys who listen to the show, so we may hear otherwise from your colleagues.

Oh, cool. Yeah, I can’t wait to hear if someone says, yes, no, we only use that for the Supreme Court.

Yeah, so keep listening, Lucy.

I will.

Thank you very much for your call, Lucy.

That’s great.

Thank you.

Take care now. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

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