Epizootic

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Ken and I’m calling from Fort Worth, Texas.

Hi Ken, welcome to the show.

Hey, it’s good. I’m a big fan of your show. I’m glad to be on.

Thank you very much.

That’s great. How can we help you?

I’ve got kind of a crazy thing. I grew up in North Carolina and my father would say a certain thing to me.

And my grandparents on my mother’s side would also say a similar thing.

I don’t know if they heard it from each other or if, but they’re from different parts of North Carolina.

I don’t know if it’s a Carolina thing, wanted to run it by you.

If I was feeling under the weather, I would say, you know, I’m not feeling too good today.

And one of them would say something like, well, I hope you don’t have the epizootics.

And if I said, well, what is that?

Then they would say, well, it’s kind of like the horse kickles, only you don’t break out.

But they would vary it.

So sometimes they might say, well, I hope it’s not the horse kickles.

And I would say, what’s that?

And they’d say, well, it’s kind of like the epizootics, only you break out.

So it was kind of this common thing with the epizootics and the horse kickles.

-huh.

And then what happened?

Well, maybe it was unique to our family or something, but I don’t know.

It’s kind of a joke.

But even to this day, I can be talking to my father on the phone

And mention that my kid’s a little under the weather or something.

And he’ll say, well, man, I sure hope it’s not the horse kickles.

Okay.

So they’re kind of teasing you, right?

Yeah, but I wondered if it actually was any such a thing or where that expression might have come from.

Ken, I think, this is my guess about this.

In the Dictionary of American Regional English, there is one citation for something called the horse kick.

And that’s the stomach ache you get before diarrhea.

And it’s, you know, as if a horse kicked you in the stomach.

Oh, well, that kind of makes sense.

Yeah.

And so I would guess that horse kickles is just a variant of that.

Could be, yeah.

I’ve never heard of horse kickles, but epizootic we know something about, right?

Yeah, we do.

We do.

Yeah, that was actually a term that was used for a disease of livestock,

A temporary disease that afflicts animals in the same way that an epidemic afflicts people.

Oh, so the zoo part comes from animals.

Right, from the Greek word for animal.

And dim comes from the Greek word for people.

Yeah.

Yeah, so it actually was, you know, a more formal word, but then people took it and ran with it.

So after a while, lepozutic and a lot of different spellings and pronunciations started just to mean any vague disease that you couldn’t name, right?

Right, right, some kind of malady.

And I think as your family did, it was sort of something that you might tease somebody to, you know, say maybe you don’t feel so bad.

Oh, you don’t have the horse kickles of lepozutic.

Yeah.

They just thought you were a malingerer, right?

That you just do it in school?

Yeah, that’s right.

Well, you know, it’ll be good now if next time they say that,

I’ll say, you know where that word actually comes from.

There we go.

Yeah, yeah.

I know if somebody knew, it would be you guys.

Well, it sounds like the kind of word that, you know,

You say to a kid for the first time and their eyes get really big.

Yeah.

Because they think they’re going to die.

Or at least break out.

Okay, yeah.

Yeah, so it goes back well into the 1800s.

Epizudic does.

Horse Kickles, that sounds like a family innovation, so hang on to that one.

Teach that to your kids.

Yeah, I will be passing that along.

I probably already have, actually.

Thanks for calling, Ken.

Really appreciate it.

Thanks so much for taking my call.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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