From Hell to Breakfast

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi there, this is Brad Davis calling from Dallas, Texas.

Hello, Brad. Welcome to the show.

Hey, what’s up, buddy?

Thank you.

Hey, how are you? I’m excited to be here.

We’re great. How can we help you?

Well, my grandfather, whom I never met, was known for his colorful expressions.

And one of the ones that I had always heard growing up was, scattered from hell to breakfast.

So if you might say, oh, I went into Joe’s office and things were scattered from hell to breakfast.

You might also use it to describe somebody’s mental state.

That lady didn’t know what she was talking about.

She was scattered from hell to breakfast.

So I love the saying, but I’m not quite really sure what it means.

I mean, I get the context, but I’d love to know the origins if there are any.

So, Grant, hell to breakfast, either helter-skelter or thoroughly?

Completely?

Completely, yeah.

From hell to breakfast, like over a wide area, over a long distance, over a long period of time.

So we’re talking about an emphatic kind of slangy statement.

And it’s so colorful, and yet it kind of avoids the trap of using the word hell.

If you’re very careful about your language, for some reason, people kind of get away with using hell in that context,

whereas they might not use hell as an interjection when they’re angry.

Does that make sense?

Sure.

Some people have speculated it’s related to Hell’s Kitchen because there is a little used version of that, which is something like almost exactly the same way, which is like, I could not believe the mess the kids made of that room.

They had toys scattered all the way to Hell’s Kitchen, which means from here to Hell’s Kitchen.

And so when we’re talking about Hell to breakfast, we’re talking about from Hell, a very deep, dark, faraway, dangerous place, all the way to where I eat my breakfast in the morning.

So it’s a long way.

Yeah, I’ve also seen from Hell to Harlem.

Hell to Harlem is another one, yep.

That’s all interesting. You know, it’s funny, and I do occasionally use the phrase myself, and it always seems to make some heads cock a little bit.

So that’s great to know a little bit more about it.

I hope you keep using it.

I will, and some of the other phrases that he used are quite interesting. Maybe I’ll be able to call back and discuss those at a later date.

Yeah, sure. We’d love to have it. Or pop an email over, and we’ll take a look at it. That’s wonderful, Brad. Thank you, sir.

Thank you so much.

Okay, bye-bye.

Take care. Bye-bye.

You know, looking here in the historical dictionary of American slang, I see from hell to breakfast goes back to 1862.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, long history.

I love that it pops up during the middle of the Civil War, basically, right?

Of course, yeah.

During this period of major American kind of sturm and drung, like all this horrible kind of chaos that brought language from the south to the north and language from the north to the south.

We’d love to hear about the words and phrases that have been passed down through your family.

Give us a call at 877-929-9673 or send it an email to words@waywordradio.org.