“If I had my druthers…” A former Texan says the youngsters he works with in his adopted home of Ohio don’t understand this expression meaning “If I had my way.” He wants to know its origin. If you still can’t get enough of the word “druthers,” this video should cure you pretty quickly. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Druthers”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello there, Miss Martha. This is John calling from Galleon, Ohio. How are you today?
Well, hello. I’m fine. What a gallant greeting.
Oh, well, I was calling about the word druthers, spelled that B-R-U-T-H-E-R-S.
And my family is all from Texas. My wife and I live in Galleon right now.
And we do foster care, and most of the kids that we get are from inner city Columbus or Cleveland.
And we hear, we use the term druthers like mostly when we’re talking about what we want for dinner, as in do you have any druthers, and we find that a lot of these young people have no idea what we’re talking about.
I was wondering if that’s just a local thing as far as Texas is concerned or what other parts of the country that comes from and maybe how far back that went.
I don’t know.
What I know about it is that it probably comes from the contraction of I’d rather, that’s I apostrophe D rather, or would rather, like W-O-L-D-R-A-T-H-E-R, I’d rather or would rather.
And so you’d say, well, what do you want for dinner?
You’d say, well, I’d rather have spinach and cornbread and a big plate of fried potatoes, right?
And you can see how when you’re speaking fast or you’ve got a bit of an accent, maybe all that’s left is the D and it joins up with the rather and creates a new word on its own.
It happens now and again in English.
It’s not that common, but it does happen.
Yeah, but I don’t think this is just Texas.
Because I remember growing up in Louisville, Kentucky, we had Druthers restaurants.
They actually had a restaurant chain called Druthers, and the slogan was, I’d rather go to Druthers.
Yeah, it’s definitely not Texan.
I would say that it tends to be more rural and more southern.
It is not the kind of thing that you’re going to find in inner city language, not natively.
Although, I put a little footnote here and say that a lot of the language that folks in the inner city speak, if they’re from the South originally, say the grandparents came up during the war or after the war to work in the factories, they may very well carry a bit of that Southern speech with them.
Well, that sounds great.
Cool. Well, glad to take your call, John.
All right. Thank you. I appreciate your time.
Best of luck with everything and the kids and all.
We do what we can.
All right.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Y’all take care. Bye-bye.
You too.
I’d druther. I’d druther take lots of calls like that, Martha.
Me too. If I had my druthers, that’s the way I usually hear it.
If I had my druthers, I’d do this or that.
Yeah, it is usually a plural noun is druthers, and it’s great. I love it.
Well, we’d love to hear from you.
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