Dozy Dusty and Other Names for Hardened Periocular Discharge

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, this is Damian from New York City.

Hi, Damian. Welcome to the show.

Hello, Damian.

What’s up?

Hello. So I have a word that my grandmother used to use all the time, and I’ve never heard anybody else use it. I was wondering if you could tell me where it comes from and what it means.

It’s kind of gross. It’s a word for the stuff that accumulates in your eyes when you wake up from a nap or wake up in the morning. You know, some people call it like sand or eye boogers, but she would call it cheapas.

Cheapas.

Yes.

Cheapas.

Cheapas.

And she was Hungarian and she lived in northeastern Pennsylvania. So those may be some clues that lead us to what it means.

Yes.

I believe that’s a gigantic clue.

That’s actually the answer.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Yes.

Yes, she was just speaking Hungarian to you because…

Really?

Yes, the word in Hungarian is chipa, and you might have tried to look for it, but it’s a little bit hard to find because the spelling is C-S-I-P-A, chipa.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, I wouldn’t have thought to spell chipas C-S-I-P-A.

Yeah.

Those Hungarians.

So she would tell you to wipe the chipas out of your eye or something?

Yeah, exactly.

You’ve got some chipas in your eye.

Yeah, in Hungarian you might say chipasá chamé, which means you have gummy eyes or you have sleep in your eyes. It’s because chipa means kind of gum or gooeyness.

Oh, wow. Okay, well, all has been revealed.

That’s wonderful, right?

Yeah, there’s apparently a bunch of words in Hungarian for it, like mjálka, slime, believe it or not, it’s spelled S-L-E-J-M. Akóní, turha. But I like chipa. I think it’s adorable.

I don’t know the sound of it.

Yeah, I like it too. I just imagine little birds putting grains of sand on my eye in the night.

Yeah.

Little elf birds, you know, preparing shoes and putting sand there. And I don’t think anybody knows where chippa comes from, but it is very similar to the Turkish word for this, which is chapak. So some people think it might have been borrowed into Hungarian from Turkish.

Interesting.

Well, do the Hungarians have a cheap-a-man like we have the sandman?

No, but the Germans do. They don’t have a cheap-a-man, but they have a different… Yeah, they have a sandman. They also have a sandman. The Germans call it augenbuter, meaning eye butter, and a phrase that translates as sand seeds.

So many different words for this.

I’m a hard no on eye butter.

Eye butter, yeah.

The French, even worse, they call it chassi, which ultimately through a long winding path comes from the Latin word for poop.

I poop?

So I poop.

Okay.

Aren’t you glad you started us down this long winding path?

Now, the Portuguese word remola may compare the eye goobers to honey, which I think is very nice.

Oh, like mel, yeah.

Yeah, mel. Could be your mel, yeah. Around the world insertion names for eye butter.

Oh, I could keep you here for an hour, my friend. Sleepy buds, dozy dust, sleepy men, sleepy wings, crusties.

Damien, why?

The older Scots language, they called it rack or gar, gar with two R’s or one R. Well, English gowned, too. Nobody says gowned, but that’s an old word for it as well. Or we can get medical and call it hardened periocular discharge.

I think you guys need to release, in A Way with Words, a sleep pajama set that has all the names for this on it.

Yeah, there we go.

Right with footies.

That’d be nice.

And a cocoa mug.

Yeah.

Merch tie-ins.

Merch tie-ins.

Damien, you’re a genius.

I appreciate it.

Yeah.

And thank you so much for calling. I want Chippa on me.

Thanks for having me on, guys. I love the show.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Thanks.

I’m adopting Chippa.

I love that.

Take care.

I want a mug with that on it.

Thanks, Damien.

Bye.

Thank you.

Well, maybe you’ve got a cute or clever term for the eye crust that you get at night. Let us know, 877-929-9673, or tell us an email, words@waywordradio.org.