To Eat Someone Out of House and Home

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Candace and I’m calling from Memphis. Though I live in Memphis right now, I’m actually from New York City originally. And on my mother’s side of the family, I’m third generation New Yorker. And when I was little, my mother had three children. And when I was little, she would say things like, you kids are eating me out of house and home. Whenever, like, just, you know, I guess we were eating too much. And she would say it all the time. And I’ve just been so curious as I think about now I’m an adult and I have to go to the grocery store very often. It made me think about that. And I was wondering if you knew where that was from.

You know, it reminds me of my own childhood. There were five kids in my family and my brother and I, my twin brother and I, we were just like all teenage boys. We would eat everything. And my mom still tells the story about us eating the unsweetened baker’s chocolate. You know, once you’ve eaten the good stuff, you go for the not good stuff. Unsweetened baker’s chocolate is not a delight, let me tell you. But yeah, eating me out of house and home. Very familiar. Yeah. Anything that’s not nailed down if you have teenagers, especially teenage boys, right? Right. And I had two brothers, so she would always talk about, these boys are eating me out of house and home.

Well, this has been going on for a very, very long time. The expression house and home itself is an example of alliterative emphasis, you know, those two H’s. Because if she had just said, you’re eating me out of house, or if she said, you’re eating me out of home, it just doesn’t carry the same weight, right, as eating me out of house and home. It’s very, very emphatic. And the expression house and home goes way back to at least the early, early 13th century. And for a while, people were talking about, you know, being scared out of house and home or chased out of house and home. It was used in a lot of different contexts, but then it settled on eating, eating me out of house and home. And probably in part because Shakespeare used this expression in Henry IV, part two, when somebody is complaining about Falstaff, the big guy, saying, he hath eaten me out of house and home. He hath put all my substance into that fat belly of his.

Oh, wow. And of course, it’s not just a problem among English speakers because there are expressions like this all over the world. I mean, some of my favorites are in Italian, it’s they’re eating like a wolf, or in Brazil, it’s they’re eating like a locust. And in Spanish, you might say somebody is eating like a new file, you know, like a metal file that’s just like filing away something that’s very, very solid. But, you know, I think my favorite is the expression in German that translates as they’re eating the hair off my head. I like the Arabic one. They ate the camel and all it carried.

Oh, that’s good, too. You know, in Dutch and Bulgarian, they eat the ears off your head. Oh, my gosh. Wow. So, yeah, Candice, it’s a long tradition of people eating all the food in the house.

Okay. That’s amazing. Oh, well, she died a few years ago, so it’s so nice to think about her in this way and that this was something that’s been said for thousands of years.

Yeah, a long, a long time, a very long time. As a matter of fact, before it was house and home, they more often said house and harbor. Like Martha was saying, it was about protecting the home front rather than protecting the pantry. And these doublets, it’s a classic English doublet, as they’re called. Like eight in a bet is a doublet, house and home is a doublet.

Yeah, so Candice, you’re not alone. And I love that you have this linguistic heirloom that you’re carrying on from your mother. That’s just really lovely.

Oh, yes, absolutely. Well, thank you so much.

All right. Take care, Candice. Thank you. You too. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

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