Crisp to Mean Cranky

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Nathan from San Antonio.

Hey, Nathan, welcome.

Yeah, so I have a question for you all about a word that I heard all the time growing up, and the word is Chris.

And I thought I’d tell you a little bit about when I would hear it.

So I grew up in Chicago, and my parents would often take us on road trips down to Florida to go to like Disney World or something like that.

And we’d get up really early in the morning to leave at about like 4 a.m.

And so everyone would be really tired and cranky.

And they would use the word crisp to basically mean that.

So, for example, if I was bothering my sister, my parents might say, you know, Nathan, leave her alone. She’s really crisp.

Or if I sniffed at my parents, I would say, oh, I’m sorry, I was just being crisp.

And I’ve used this word many times since then, and no one knows what I’m talking about.

And when I asked my parents about it, they said that they heard it growing up.

But all my friends in Chicago haven’t heard of it, and I’ve tried to look it up, and I just don’t know where it’s coming from.

Or if this is a real thing or just a family thing.

And, Nathan, you’re spelling it C-R-I-S-P?

Crisp?

That’s right, crisp.

Okay, yeah.

I think we can help you with this.

So just to recap here, it’s early in the morning. Everyone’s gotten up at 4 a.m., and you and your sister are just not morning people. You are still tired and cranky and just not with it.

Right, yeah, and my brother.

So it would be a big fight.

Okay.

Yeah.

So there’s three little monsters that your parents are having to keep together, and you’re all crisp. I think it might make your parents crisp.

Yeah, parents are probably crisp too, but they’ve got to suffer through it.

That’s parenthood.

We can probably help you with this.

I think this is probably a form of a crisp adjective that I know that is in Green’s Dictionary of Slang.

Jonathan Green has put this together, and he takes this back to the late 70s.

And the definition that he has is suffering from an excess of drugs, drink, fast living, and stress.

And obviously, that doesn’t fully apply to three children on their way to Disney World.

But I think the suffering from an excess and the stress part, too, because we’re talking about somebody that is burned out.

And that’s what crisp is.

It’s literally a synonym for other slang expressions like fried or baked or burned out, where you are just exhausted.

You have nothing left in the tank.

There’s no energy to spare.

Huh, cool.

Yeah, that absolutely sounds about right.

Is there any, like, regional thing to it?

Like, you know what I mean?

Some of the earliest uses come up from slang collected on college campuses.

So it’s not regional, but it might be what’s called age graded, where it started with young people.

And I don’t know how old your parents are, but if they were in college in, say, the mid to late 70s, perhaps that’s where they learned it.

Yeah, that totally checks out.

Wow.

Well, yeah, that’s absolutely it.

I can’t wait to tell my folks that they didn’t just make it up.

Yeah.

Not just your family.

Not just your family.

Well, Nathan, thanks for calling.

We really appreciate it.

Thanks, Martha and Grant.

Y’all are great.

I love the show.

Thanks for having me.

Oh, yeah, of course.

Go again sometime.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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