Foundering on Cake

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Scott. I’m calling from Haymarket, Virginia.

Haymarket, Virginia. Where is that?

So Haymarket, Virginia is in northern Virginia, kind of outside the normal Fairfax boundaries.

We’re in Prince William County.

Okay. All right. Well, welcome to the show, Scott. How can we help you?

So I want to talk to you about a word. I’m not originally from Haymarket, Virginia.

I’m from southwestern Virginia, the coal-filled Appalachian, Virginia.

Oh, yeah.

And growing up, my family would use the word founder.

And they would use it in a very specific way, meaning, as I understand it, that I’ve eaten so much of something that I no longer want it.

It’s no longer tasty to me.

So if I’ve eaten a lot of chocolate cake, I would say I’ve really foundered on this chocolate cake.

And I assumed everyone used that, of course.

And I moved to Northern Virginia and became a teacher up here.

And I was using it with a colleague a couple years ago.

And she stopped me and said, I have no idea what you’re talking about.

What is that word?

And I realized, but I’ve asked another folks that no one up here used it much.

And then that got me really curious.

I started kind of digging around and I discovered it seems to be an Appalachian word.

But I found other folks up here in Northern Virginia that actually use it, but they use it in what I think might be the original sense, which was with horses.

So there’s kind of horse country up here.

And I understand horses, when they eat so much that they get sick and maybe even die.

If you give a horse unlimited amounts of grain, it will eat itself to its dead.

That’s called foundering.

Yeah, that’s it.

You’ve nailed it, Scott.

That’s exactly it.

Awesome.

Like, how has that gotten to Appalachia as a cultural thing?

Because I don’t think any of us that used it growing up had the connection with horses, even though maybe the people who started it had a stronger connection that was part of their life.

Is that something that’s unique to Appalachia, or is that like a rural thing or a southern thing?

It’s not unique to Appalachia.

I wouldn’t call it rural so much as agriculture related or, again, related to places that are traditionally closer to the land, more animal husbandry and that sort of thing.

When you look at uses of founder to refer to eat too much, it’s so often horses who’ve done things like found their way into an apple orchard and gorge themselves on unripe apples.

So not only are they completely full, but they’re sick from the green apples and it causes problems in their GI tract and so forth.

And you’ll find also references is in the late 1800s, although the term dates at least to the 1860s applied to humans and animals.

You’ll find it talking about hungry young kids who come into the house and have way too much of whatever is on the table.

And just, you know, there’s just sick from eating so much.

I think it’s a natural outgrowth from that to compare ourselves to animals.

We are animals after all, but it’s not that big of a jump.

But it appears mainly in, I hesitate to say rural because in horsey parts of the country that I don’t think of as rural because they’re so close to suburban areas or urban areas even, they still use this term.

The dictionaries all say it’s standard to say that an animal foundered when it ate too much and was debilitated as a result.

But, I mean, did you grow up saying I foundered on too much apple pie at the table?

Unfortunately, yes.

I did foundered on quite a few things.

Yeah, yeah.

And I would advocate, I’m going to use your national platform here, I think we should all use founder.

Like it’s a perfectly good word, and I don’t have another word to use for that.

You know, I’m in situations, and I’ll say, I really foundered on this thing I’m eating.

I don’t want it anymore.

It’s the sensation of not really being hungry for this particular item or that.

And you’re suffering as a result.

Is that right?

Is that part of the meaning?

Yeah, exactly.

Well, you know, it’s always kind of a humorous thing.

I think every time I use founder, I’m pointing out that, you know, how ridiculous I am that I’ve eaten so much cake that I don’t want any more cake.

Yeah, I’ve heard people say I’ve had an elegant sufficiency of this or I’ve been sufficiently suffonsified.

But I will never founder on your program.

Hey, that’s great.

That’s great.

Yeah, there’s hundreds of episodes of DeGorge online.

All right.

Great.

Thanks, Scott.

Take care now.

Thanks a lot.

Bye bye.

Bye.

What unusual expressions are you hearing where you live? Call us about them. 877-929-9673 or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.