“Not the brightest bulb in the Christmas tree lights,” “The wind is blowing but nothing’s moving,” “A few tacos short of a combo platter.” After Grant tells a story on himself, the hosts discuss euphemistic ways of saying someone’s not playing with a full deck. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Full-Deckisms”
You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette.
And I’m Grant Barrett. Martha, do you know what a full deckism is?
A full deckism. Is it a poker term?
Kind of. It comes from saying that somebody is not dealing with a full deck.
Oh, I’ve certainly been called that. Yes, yes.
It means that they’re slow or stupid. Martha, you’re none of those things.
Thank you.
Or you might say someone is a sandwich short of a picnic or a pickle shy of a full barrel
Or one spark short of a bonfire.
And I wanted to tell you that we have a new one in our house.
Oh, yeah?
Yeah, my wife and I, we lost the keys to a family member’s car.
They loaned it to us while they were away on a cruise.
And we spent days looking for these keys.
Days.
Oh, no.
Yeah, and we didn’t want to call the locksmith
Because we weren’t sure whether or not we should do that.
And we weren’t, you know, all this stuff.
So they show up after their cruise,
And some other family members show up
In order to drive them back to Sacramento.
And the AAA guy shows up to take the car back.
And we’re all standing there and my wife and I are red-faced and embarrassed and the keys are missing.
And it’s the only set of keys that anyone has for this car.
You know, it’s big drama.
You know, terrible stuff.
Trip ruined, trust broken, all that stuff.
And you didn’t get to use the car.
No, and we didn’t get to use the car.
The AAA guy says, oh, why don’t I just open it up right here?
We can see if the keys are inside.
So, of course he does.
And the keys are in there and they’re behind the scenes.
And so it’s like all these days of drama of the missing keys and people doing things they wouldn’t otherwise have to do.
All terrible stuff. We just felt really foolish. So in our house, you can now say
Somebody is one key short of an automobile. It means that they’re not that bright.
And there’s a ton of these. You know, I went looking for some more of these
Full deckisms as they’re called. And there’s a wonderful, long, long list by Alan Silverstein.
A handle short of a suitcase, a few planes short of an Air Force, a few pickles short of a jar.
Sure. A few peas short of a casserole.
Yeah, tons of these.
A beer short of a six-pack.
Has it floored in neutral?
That’s a great one related to the car usage, right?
Oh, man, yeah.
Their driveway doesn’t quite reach the road.
Well, if a turn of phrases turned your head, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673.
We’re here to talk about grammar, slang, punctuation, and word histories.
You can also send an email to words@waywordradio.org.
