Transcript of “Get the Goody Out”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, my name is Amelia, and I’m calling from Arlington, Virginia.
Welcome to the show.
Hey, Amelia.
Thank you.
I have something that my wife said recently that I was wondering if you could help me out with.
Oh, yes, please.
She and I have been married for a number of years now.
We’re both in our mid-30s, and we’re both from the Midwest.
She’s from Iowa, and I’m from Ohio.
Every once in a while, she’ll say something that I’ve never heard before, never heard anyone else say before.
So I get to figure out, is it an Ohio thing or just something her family says or something she’s made up herself?
Most recently, she said she was talking about our neighbor who was wearing these sweatpants that had holes all the way through them.
And she said, oh, wow, he’s really getting the goody out of that pair of pants.
And I realized, yeah.
I could tell that she meant she’s getting like the most out of them.
She said, get the goody out of it.
And I thought, you know, it kind of sounds like a phrase that people say, but then I
Realized I thought more about it.
I don’t know anyone else who says that.
And her mom was in town recently and she said it.
And I asked her about it.
She didn’t know where it came from.
And her sister also says it.
So it’s definitely in their family, but nobody knows where it came from.
And I tried looking it up online and there really isn’t much out there about this phrase.
So I was curious if you guys had any insight onto it.
Well, I think that that’s probably pretty straightforward.
It’s probably related to the idea of a goody being the edible kernel of a nut, particularly hickory nuts and walnuts.
Since the late 18th century or so, the term goody has been used to mean something tasty or desirable, you know, like candy or even hard to get at crab meat, you know, get the goody out of a crab shell.
Sure.
Let’s see. It’s also been used for the yolk of an egg.
So the good part, I guess, of an egg if you’re into yolks.
And the flesh of an orange sometimes.
There you go.
Yeah.
So all those words are kind of the same.
They come from the same place, like the middle of something, kind of?
Yeah.
Yeah, the middle and also just the good part.
You know, like a goodie bag has goodies in it or a goodie picker.
I love that term, goody picker. It’s a pointed instrument for digging the meat out of a nut.
Is it regional at all or all over?
Goody is kind of scattered throughout much of the United States, the South and a little bit in the Midwest.
So I’m not surprised that your wife picked that up there.
That’s interesting about the nut because her mother, my mother-in-law, grew up on a farm and her dad had a bunch of black walnut trees and would like harvest them.
And there’s stories about her, like the basement being full of walnuts.
So I wonder if they…
I know that we had a walnut tree at one of our houses. I know that feeling.
Yeah. They are all a bit scarred about it, I think, because of how much it stains them.
Well, that’s really interesting.
Well, I’ll pass it along to them.
I think they’ll be interested to hear.
All right, Amelia, thank you for helping us get the goody out of this question.
Yeah, absolutely.
Thanks so much.
Take care.
Thanks a lot.
Best to your wife.
Thanks.
Bye.
Bye-bye.
When you marry into a family, you don’t just marry your spouse.
You marry their language.
And there’s a lot that you might not understand.
Martha and I can help you sort that out.
Or talk to us on Twitter @wayword.
