Feeling Poosly

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha and Grant. This is Hyra from Southern California.

Hey, Hyra, welcome to the show. What can we do for you today?

Thank you. I’m calling about my husband’s grandmother, who was born in 1896 in Brewster, New York,

Lived her whole life in the Mid-Hudson Valley, primarily Gardner, New Paltz area.

And she used the expression, if you weren’t feeling well, she used the expression feeling poosly.

She’d say, oh, you look like you’re not feeling, you know, it looks like you’re feeling a little

Poosley today. Maybe you should stay home from school. And I was just wondering if you can

Share any insight on the history of that expression. Oh, wow. Poosley. In 1896?

1896. Yeah. And lived her whole life, right? And it’s, you know, near Poughkeepsie, Kingston,

90 miles north of New York City. And you know it because he knows it.

Yes. All the cousins, all the grandkids all remember her saying it.

And do they still say it too? Like did she spread this as a family word throughout the generations?

Oh, yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. It’s carried on. Yep.

I love when that happens. Do you have any idea how they would write that?

My guess is it would be P-O-O-S-L-E-Y or P-O-O-S-L-Y.

I should add that both sides of her family go back to the 1600s, early 1600s in that area.

So she’s a descendant of the Dutch Huguenots that settled that area.

So it goes way back.

Perfect. 100% perfect.

You were hitting all the right notes.

Usually when we see it written, it’s often spelled that way, P-O-O-S-L-Y or L-E-Y.

You know, we talked about this, Martha, on the show in 2009.

And if you remember, at the time, I did not look in H.L. Mencken’s American Language.

Now, this book is well known for having multiple editions.

And only in the fourth edition is there a footnote where he quotes a list of words he received from a fellow by the name of Carl von Schlieder of Hackensack, New Jersey.

And every word on the list is obviously Dutch.

And Pusli is in there, and it’s glossed as whining,

W-H-I-N-I-N-G, whining,

Even though it’s not so obviously Dutch as the rest of the list.

All right, so hang on to that.

And that book came out in 1936.

Then in 2009, the expert Dutch linguist,

Nicolina van der Seys,

She released a book about the history of Dutch words in English,

And she referenced that passage in H.L. Mencken’s book.

And in her book, which is called Cookies, Coleslaw, and Stoops,

The Influence of Dutch on the North American Languages,

She didn’t use any of the words for the Mencken list

Because she didn’t find them kind of spread enough in the American languages,

Including Poosley.

In other words, she didn’t see them as being wholly borrowed into English.

And they’re not really.

Poozley isn’t that common.

You can find it occasionally online.

And I think, Martha, back me up here, in the history of doing this show, what have we had?

Maybe a half dozen people ever ask about poosley?

Yeah, and I don’t know if they were all members of your family.

But so here we have that list from Carl Von Schlitter mentioned in the Micken book.

But then there’s another list that came out.

I think it was from 1945, that also has poosley and, like the Van Schleder list,

Mentions it as Dutch and connects it to the word pooselig, which is Dutch, P-O-E-Z-E-L-I-G.

Now, the problem with this Dutch connection is that word means chubby or plump.

And you’re saying to yourself, how do we get from chubby or plump to feeling poosley?

Now, how would you define the way that your fellow’s family uses poosley?

What do they mean by poosley, Hira?

Just feeling poorly.

And that’s actually one thought I had as far as the origin of the word.

But just feeling off, like you’re about to get a cold, or you’re just a little nauseous, or you’re just feeling icky.

All right.

That’s how she used it.

Now, we’re going to take a little path here on how meanings change.

And this is called semantic shift in linguistics.

So it starts with the Dutch meaning of plump or chubby, which then in the U.S. Becomes poosley, meaning soft or oversensitive,

Which then shifts to whiny or complaining, which then shifts to feeling sick or run down.

And over time, it makes a lot of sense.

It’s just when you jump from meaning plump to feeling sick that it doesn’t make a lot of sense.

It’s the boiling frog idea.

Does that make sense to you here?

Yes, I know.

And especially because you have that breadth of time.

Yeah, the breadth of time, exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But my confidence level on this explanation is still not 100%.

But because we have it in written form over about 100 years, I’m feeling really good about this.

That’s wonderful.

And most of the written uses we have historically are from areas historically settled by Dutch people.

I love it.

So if you’re feeling poosley, then you have something to whine about, right?

Yeah.

Exactly.

I treasure both of you and what you and your team do.

So thank you so much.

And thank you for this time.

I really appreciate it.

The family’s just going to love hearing this.

Oh, it’s our pleasure.

Definitely.

Stay in touch.

And best wishes to you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you, Howard.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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