Cough Etiquette

When somebody sneezes, you say “bless you” or “gesundheit,” but what about when someone coughs? Grant believes that if anything, the cougher ought to say “excuse me.” A commenter on Paul Davidson’s blog sets a good rule of thumb: Bless anything that looks like it hurt. This is part of a complete episode.

Transcript of “Cough Etiquette”

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Well, hello, Martha. Hi, Grant.

Hey there, what’s up, buddy?

Well, hello, who’s this?

This is Kurt in Grand Rapids.

Hiya, Kurt.

I have kind of a linguistic etiquette question for you.

Okay.

I work in an office, and my co-worker was just getting over a cold, and I was talking to her, and she started coughing. She had like a little bit of a coughing spell, and when she got done, I realized we don’t really have a good word in English to say after someone’s done coughing. When they sneeze, you can say, bless you, or gesundheit. But coughing, you just kind of have this awkward silence, and then you kind of continue the conversation.

It’s true, come to think of it.

And you help me out. Is there something we could say? Have you tried anything?

No. I mean, I took a little bit of German in high school, so I know that gesundheit basically means, you know, you’re wishing them good health.

Yeah, it’s cognate with soundness.

Yeah, but throwing out a gesundheit after a cough, I think, just confuses people.

It does. I guess it depends on if you want to start a conversation with this person.

Well, that’s true, I guess. I could teach them a little bit about what gesundheit means.

Yeah, yeah. Short of that, do you have any suggestions?

I think that it’s all the responsibility of the coffer. I don’t think it’s like a sneeze where the onlooker is obligated to say anything. I think the coffer needs to say, excuse me, or pardon me, or I’m going to step away, or send me the doctor bill, whatever.

Okay. So the onus is really on the coffer.

In my opinion.

Okay. Although there was a discussion about this on Paul Davidson’s blog a few years ago, and one of the comments, I really love this woman named Kathleen says, I bless anything that looks like it hurt.

Aww.

So if it’s one of those deep bone-breaking coughs, she says bless you.

That’s right. Your throat boo-boo.

Yeah. Either that or I was considering, you know, you remember the show Seinfeld?

Yeah.

Sure. There was a thing that Jerry was trying to get started where, especially if it was a good-looking woman, if she sneezed, he would say, you are so good-looking. Maybe we could try that.

I like that. Well, you know, actually, in German, as a joke, you can say Schoenheit after somebody sneezes, and that means beauty, basically, you know, fineness, beauty. And the idea is, yeah, I hope you look better than you look right now.

So that’s kind of, well, that’s kind of different, isn’t it?

Yeah, a little bit. I’ll give that one a spin.

Yeah, let us know how that goes, Kirk. We can talk a little bit about what Shanghai means.

Yeah, let us know how that goes, all right?

I sure will.

Okay, thanks a lot.

Thanks a lot.

Bye-bye.

Thank you, bye-bye.

If there’s something that you say after people cough, let us know, 877-929-9673, or email words@waywordradio.org.

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