Flow of Electricity

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Jen.

I’m calling from Burlington, Vermont today.

Great. Welcome to the show. How can we help you?

So I was calling in because I was recently flying across the country.

And as you know, in airports these days, outlets are a hot commodity.

Oh, yeah.

And a woman came up to me and asked if she could plug her phone in where I was sitting, because there was an outlet in the chair, and said she just needed a little juice.

And it got me thinking that that’s kind of a funny term.

And I listen to you guys when I’m driving a lot and thought, oh, I should call and ask.

Why do we call charging stuff juice?

Yeah, it is a weird thought if you think about it, right?

Does it feel slangy to you?

Like, it’s just a funny slang for it.

And I was like, oh, it’s kind of a funny term when you actually think about it.

It’s American slang mostly.

I mean, I’m sure it’s used a little bit in the UK, but it’s widespread in the United States.

And it’s still got a little bit of the slangy tinge to it.

And if you go back to the earlier days of electricity, I mean, electricity has been with us for a really long time.

But when we actually started to put it to steady, consistent use, like it started showing up as a regular feature in the households, there’s kind of this strange way that there’s always these verbs connected with electricity, which have kind of treat it like water.

That’s true.

We’ll talk about electricity flowing or electricity running or.

Current.

Yeah, current.

Yeah.

It’s coursing through the filament or coursing through the wire.

And again and again and again, we see all these verbs that can also be used with liquids.

And juice is one of those.

And in the kind of metaphorical way that you might explain electricity, you might describe it running through a circuit in the same way that you describe fluids flowing through, say, a plant, you know, coming up through the trunk.

Trunk, by the way, also exists in the telephone business.

You can have a telephone trunk and things like that.

So all these different kind of ways that sound vaguely natural, almost organic and plant-like.

And so juice is one of those, which is another one of those liquid-related words.

And also, juice tends to be heavy in sugar, and we tend to feel rejuvenated by it.

It’s long been associated with lots of vitamins and nutrients that the body needs.

And so the idea of adding juice to something means that you are giving it what it needs in order to make it do the thing it needs to do.

Okay, cool.

And it’s 100 years, at least 100 years we’ve been doing this.

Late 1800s, it shows up.

100 years been calling electricity juice?

Yeah, yeah, it shows up in the Boston Herald referring to the trolley, like an electric trolley in 1896.

Yeah, oh, that’s cool.

Yeah, when I was trying to think of it, I was like, oh, I thought of the nutrient thing maybe, or maybe had to do with joules as a wattage, and I’m like, oh, that doesn’t seem close enough.

And if you talk about juicing a motor or something, it’s like giving it get up and go.

Juicing a motor, yeah, juicing something up.

That’s interesting.

Yeah, something electronic.

Cool, thanks, Jen.

Oh, yeah.

Well, thanks, guys.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Okay, keep that.

You answering my question.

Yeah.

Bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

You’re going to say keep that laptop charged?

I was going to say, yeah, keep that battery charged.

I’m one of those people that when I see screenshots of people’s phones where they’re trying to show me something that happened on their screen, I always look at the battery, and I’m like, what are you doing running around with a phone that has 7% charge?

Well, charge that thing.

Plug that in.

Put it in low power mode at least.

Yeah, something.

Low power mode is my new best friend.

Yeah, low power mode will get you through the day, right?

Yeah, that really helps.

Because you do miss the flip phone days, right?

When you could go for like eight days on one charge, right?

Oh, I know.

I know.

Yeah.

On the other hand, my flip phone wouldn’t do all the wonderful things that my current phone does.

I know.

There’s that too, right?

That big old screen.

So when Tesla starts making phone batteries, then we’re all set, right?

Solar phones.

I’m all about solar phones.

Just put them in the windowsill and let them charge.

Well, we know somebody came up to you and said something that made you cock your head.

What was it?

Call us 877-929-9673 or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.