Frustrations

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Yes, this is Kay Thomas, and I’m calling from Mountain View, Arkansas.

Mountain View, Arkansas. Well, welcome, Kay.

Hi, Kay. How are you doing?

I’m doing good. Thank you.

What’s going on?

My question is an old phrase that my mother used, and my mother was born in 1911.

And I’ve never heard anyone else use this particular colorful old expression.

But when my mother was playing cards or something, and she’d be really played out about something,

She would never think of cussing, but she would say this string of words, and it almost sounded like cuss words.

But her phrase was, I’ll be jumped up and down, bow-legged, and Johnny Busshart.

And Johnny what?

Busshart, like a bust and a heart.

Plus part, like it was his last name.

Whoa, well, that sure gets the meaning across, even if we don’t have the etymology for that.

My goodness.

I know.

I asked her one time, I said, where did you ever pick that up?

And she said, oh, my mother said it.

So I’m sure that’s true.

And I thought maybe you all would know where that came from.

Well, I know shorter versions of it.

For a long time, for a couple hundred years, people would say,

Well, I’ll be jumping, a great jumping fire.

And there’s a lot of variants.

Jump in Jehoshaphat is related as well.

Or you’d say, I’ll be jumped.

Although that’s not quite as old.

Well, I’ll be jumped up is another one, too.

And all of these are expressions of surprise or dismay or that sort of thing.

You want to stomp your foot or slap your knee or something when you’re saying that.

Yeah.

Right.

She would lose her bid in pitch, and that’s when she would say it.

I love that.

And it sounds like the bowlegged is an intensifier, don’t you think?

Yes, yes.

All of these, the longer form that she’s got, they’re hard to find

Because people kind of elaborate and emphasize and add to them over time.

And they develop their own particular varieties.

But I believe that they’re all connected back in history to this basic idea of I’ll be jumped or I’ll be jumped up.

And that itself is probably a euphemism for Jesus Christ

And probably related to people saying things like Jiminy and Jingo and Judas and Jupiter instead,

Instead of taking the Lord’s name in vain.

But it’s so far removed that the connection is tenuous.

Oh, yes, she would have never done that.

That’s so funny.

That’s interesting.

She said a lot of phrases where she did use, like you’re saying, something that modified it.

It was longer.

A lot of people say, for crying out loud.

Well, she would always say, for crying out loud and weeping in public.

That’s a great one.

I love that.

That’s terrific.

And that we do know is for Christ, right?

The crying is a euphemism for Christ there.

I like that.

Oh, that is.

I would never have picked that up.

Well, she probably didn’t know either.

Right, right.

She probably picked it up independently.

Because after a while it just becomes a thing that you say

And has no religious or swearing connotation at all.

Exactly.

Well, Kay, that’s the best that we know.

Thank you so much.

It’s probably mostly hers with a little bit of connection

To something that other people say, all right?

All right. Thank you so much.

Take care now.

All right.

You too. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

For crying out loud and weeping in public.

I love that. I’m going to start adopting that.

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