Expressions Meaning “For a Long Time”

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hello there. This is Ron Cooper. I’m calling from Gloverville, South Carolina.

I’m curious about a phrase that I heard growing up that I never could quite figure. I knew what was meant by it, but I never could figure out how it came to be. And it’s a way of expressing that something has endured for a long time. So you might say my family has lived here since hatchet was hammer. Now that just always struck me as weird.

Since hatchet was hammer, like the two tools, H-A-T-C-H-E-T and H-A-M-M-E-R.

Exactly.

Okay.

Now, there’s a similar one in which somebody would say, since goat was calf. And I’m not sure that that one’s any clearer.

Wow.

I can help you with those.

The first one I have data for, but the second one I have no data for. I don’t know of since goat was calf or goat was a calf or any form of that. I don’t have any evidence for it anywhere.

So perhaps that’s just a family version. But since hatchet was hammer or since hatchet was a hammer, that’s what we do a little bit more about.

In the modern era, it’s still used. It’s never been all that common. At about the same level of frequency as these other colorful ways that we talk about something being old, like since Hector was a pop or since Bethuselah was a boy or since Christ was a corporal.

We have a whole bunch of these. And this kind of fits into that whole set since dirt was young, since dirt was rock.

But this one, since hatchet was hammer, currently is often used in the Caribbean, believe it or not. I have plenty of examples from reference books and just in the wild, the people using it in Belize and in Grenada and Trinidad and Tobago and the Bahamas.

Interesting.

And the version that you often find in the Caribbean is a little different. It’s since King Hatchet was a hammer. Like King Hatchet was some great royalty. And I guess it’s just a play on words there.

But the earliest I can find it is actually from New Zealand, since King Hatchet was a hammer in the 1880s, pops up in a New Zealand newspaper. So it’s got a little bit of history, but again, never really been that common.

Interesting. I’m not sure if there’s a connection with the Caribbean or something in New Zealand with low country South Carolina, where I grew up.

I don’t know, maybe some people who lived there moved there from those regions and used it and it spread around a little.

So I do find one example from a 1925 Alabama newspaper where they call it a black expression, but of course that’s just one source. So I don’t want to say that it is from those other places.

I think more likely what happened is it used to be more widespread, but it fell out of use in most places. And now it’s just you, Ron, and the Caribbean.

Well, I feel quite privileged.

Well, it’s good company to be keeping. They know how to live right down there.

Yeah.

We often find this, don’t we, Martha, that stuff just falls out of use, and it leaves these weird little pockets of language that later seem so curious, and they’re fun to explore.

Yeah, and I’m so interested that the king part fell out. I wonder if King Hatchet was originally some kind of pun or an actual personage?

I haven’t been able to get to the bottom of it, but I will say that in the Caribbean versions, it’s almost always King Hatchet. It’s not just Hatchet.

So the black author Merle Collins, who’s from the Caribbean island of Grenada, although she was born in Aruba, she uses the version of it many times in her stories. And it’s when King Hatchet was only a little hammer or in the particular Grenada phrase, a little jukutu hammer, which is a Grenada word that means kind of rustic or hillbilly or uncultured.

Thank you. That really gives me a little bit of insight there. I appreciate that.

Well, I know you’ve been wondering about this since Moby Dick was a minnow.

Thanks, Ron.

We appreciate your time.

Thank you so much, Grant.

Thank you, too, Martha.

Take care.

Thanks, Ron.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

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