Get the Pips

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Holly. I’m calling from Mount Pleasant, South Carolina.

Hey, Holly, welcome.

Thanks. I had a question about something my grandma always said.

She used to have the whole family over every Tuesday for dinner, and she would always say that she’d put the pepper in the food until she could see it.

So as her eyes got worse, you can imagine that the pepper got more and more.

This was just kind of a joke that we all liked pepper so much, but every once in a while we would tell her, you know, you really went overboard on the pepper today.

And she would always say, well, that’s good for you. You won’t get the pip.

And we had no idea what the pip was. And neither did she really.

And she just said her mother always said it.

Won’t get the pip, like P-I-P?

I think so.

And, you know, we would ask her, you know, what is this disease that we’re so thankful we’re not getting for eating all this pepper?

And all she could come up with was that she thought it was a disease that chickens got or something.

Yes.

She always said her mother was of German descent. So I don’t know if it was something translated from a different language that maybe just didn’t quite make it to English.

Well, there are variations of this in other languages, but PIP has been used for certain diseases in poultry in English for five centuries at least.

So it’s true.

Yeah, and then from there, there were like respiratory diseases or diseases of like the skin or beak.

And from there, then it was generalized to any nonspecific disease for humans.

So you might just get the pip or the pips.

And it’s a little bit old-fashioned, but it’s still around here and there.

Yeah, so it’s been used for a long time.

It comes into English from Middle English, and then from Middle Dutch, it probably goes back to a Latin word meaning phlegm.

Does it have anything to do with pepper?

Nope. Not at all. Not in a bit. Nothing at all.

Oh, okay.

But I could see the pepper being a folk.

I mean, there’s always been this idea with folk remedies and folk medicine that the stronger something is, the more likely it is to cure you.

You know, if it’s nasty tasting, yep, that’s got to be the thing that’s going to cure you, right?

If it makes you blanch when you swallow it, yep, that’s going to fix you right up.

Well, maybe that’s why my family likes pepper.

There are some variations on this, too.

The meaning changed over time where, particularly in the UK, it can mean to make somebody angry, to give someone the pip.

And it can also mean to become depressed or down-spirited or to be irritated.

And there’s a line from P.G. Woodhouse, if there’s one thing that gives me the pip, it’s unpleasantness in the home.

What he means is if there’s one thing that makes me irritated, it’s unpleasantness in the home.

I don’t know.

It sounds like your grandmother’s phrase translates as don’t criticize my cooking.

I mean, that could be it too, but it was really more of a joke.

It sounds a lot like it’ll put hair on your chest.

It is a very common.

Right, or cut off the crust of the bread to get curly hair or something.

Right, yeah.

She was full of all those superstitions, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

There you go.

I feel like superstitions have been replaced by memes in our society.

What used to be passed around as folk wisdom, the folk wisdom now is meme wisdom.

That’s an interesting perspective.

I’ll come up with a meme for the pet.

We’ll watch for it.

Maybe we should do that.

We start memes based on these old sayings.

Anyway, Holly, thank you so much for your call.

We really appreciate it.

Thank you for solving the mystery.

All right.

Take care.

Call us again sometime.

Thanks.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.