Erp or Urp for Vomit

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Jody.

I’m calling from Ohio, although I am a native born and raised in Southern California in the valley.

I guess you could say I was a Valley girl.

Nice.

All right.

So what’s on your mind today, Jody?

Alright.

So I listened to your show and I love it and I’m like, okay, I’ve always wanted to know this.

So when I was growing up, my family used a particular word for vomit, throw up, and that word was erp.

And I I didn’t grow up wondering it because I literally that’s the word we used.

If you if the dog irped, he irped, you know, or the cat or me.

Or if you feel sick, you can irp into the bucket.

It was just a word we used.

We we could say vomit or throw up, but puke was rude.

So we didn’t use that word.

But it was mostly herb.

And it was all I knew, really.

I mean not all I knew, I knew the other words, but that’s all we used for that pretty much.

And then as I was getting older and I would go to friends’ houses, you know, you kind of expand beyond your own home.

You know, it’s not something that comes up all the time, but if somebody were to throw up, I would say, Oh, he irped, or look, the dog irped over here, and they would kind of like go And I go, Oh, he threw up.

Most people just went, Oh mm—

And as I got older, you know, still with my family, I guess we would use it.

It’s not like we couldn’t say else.

I don’t use it at all anymore, except when I’m playing Scrabble or something where you cause I love word games, so when you’re generating your own words and darn it, that word has never been in there, at least defined the way I would spell it, either E A R P is what I thought like Wyatt ERP or U R P or I guess it could be E R P and it never I never could find that word that means vomit.

And and and I’ve asked a few people here and there, I mean you know how often do you start talking about vomit with people, but as it’s appropriate, had hey, do you guys ever heard of this word?

Nope.

Okay.

No, that’s weird.

But we have, Jody, Martha and I have for sure.

We’ve definitely heard of this.

But let me ask you a question just on the off chance I get the answer I want.

So you’re from California.

But where are your parents from?

Okay.

My mom grew up in Central Valley, Taft, California, and which is near Bakersfield.

And my dad was from the Midwest.

My mom’s parents, which I think it’s that side of the family, I’m almost positive that it came from.

My grandma, her mom was born in Kansas and so they were in the med Midwest area, but then you know they migrated to California.

The reason I asked is because when the linguistic atlases have researched the terms that people use for Vama.

They And did do it.

And the Dictionary of American Regional English did its own field work and they asked a question about, you know, what do you call this activity, this biological activity?

ERP, URP is it’s usually spelled, was incredibly common in the Mississippi Valley, kind of Louisiana and northward northward, and kind of east and west of there, including Georgia, maybe even far as far west as the southwest, you know, southwest kind of capital S southwest as a as a geographic destination.

So it’s particularly strong.

Of course, there’s a big asterisk here is that all that fieldwork is old you know that fieldwork is 50 60 70 years old but you know sometimes those patterns hold remarkably well over the decades but interestingly the word actually appears in the movie Greece, you know, like really well.

Yes, there’s a line from Rizzo where the the I think it’s the principal or says something about I’m not only a prince, I’m a Powell, I’m a principal or something like that.

It’s just ridiculous.

And and she says something along the lines like she’s like, Hey Sin, Jason, bring the basin, erp slop, get them up.

Or maybe she just says the last part, erp slop, get them up get them up.

There’s this long so throughout folklore there’s records of this particular long saying kind of a a playground saying of icky dicky I feel sicky hasten Jason bring the basin erp slap get them up and so part of that appears in the movie Greece.

And I wonder if it was a little bit of a popularizer of ERP URP to mean vomit.

I love that.

ERP slop hip the mouth.

I’m gonna go write that down right now.

You take care of yourself now.

Thank you very much.

Have a good day.

Bye-bye.

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