You Can Give Them Books and Give Them Books, but They Just Chew the Covers

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, this is Tim White from Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Hi, Tim. How you doing?

Well, I am curious. My father had a saying that he would use, especially when we didn’t always do things as we were told. And I have no idea where it came from. I’ve tried to research it and haven’t gotten any further than just looking it up. And the saying he used was, you can give them books and give them books, but they just chew the covers right off. You can give them books and give them books, but they’ll just chew the covers right off.

And when would he use this or about whom?

Well, it really just depends on how the person was acting. Normally if you give someone a general direction or you ask something from somebody and they either did not follow the directions at all or just went their own way with it and it didn’t turn out as expected. He was a foreman for construction sites. So he had to make sure everything was well done and within standards of what they need to do. But sometimes people would just kind of deviate the course, and that was when it would often come in. And sometimes at home if we would try to do something and it didn’t turn out quite as expected, that would be the saying that I heard more often.

Okay, and would he use it in the context of, you know, you try to give somebody something valuable and they don’t appreciate it? They don’t have any idea what it’s worth?

I think it’s less of a value and more of not even understanding what it is for.

Okay. Okay. Not even having a clue. So it really is like casting pearls before swine, right?

Yes.

Yeah. About the origin, we’re not really sure about this. I know Grant has some ideas about this.

I have a pet theory.

Yeah. He does have a pet theory or hypothesis. This is an expression that’s gone back decades for sure. And there are lots of different versions of it. Like you send them to school, you buy them their books, and what do they do? They eat the books or I buy books and books and all you do is chew the covers. I’m looking at a newspaper from 1949 where a colonist says, the folks keep sending me to school, but all I do is eat the covers off the books. Bookworm, you know.

So the idea, as you suggest, is the idea of somebody who doesn’t know how to use books, you know, whether it’s a toddler or a goat.

Grant, what about your…

Well, yeah, at the base of it, it’s just like an infant chewing board books, right? They think of it as just something to relieve their sore gums and not something to learn from. But there was another thing that was happening in American culture in the 1930s and 1940s. And this was a fad or trend of college students eating unusual things, usually for fame or attention, sometimes for money. You’ve probably heard of the eating live goldfish.

Yeah.

Well, 1939 was kind of the heyday of that, and it was a fairly widespread craze. Sometimes with competition between schools, one student swallowed 89 in one sitting. Other creatures they ate were grasshoppers, a salamander, the head of a water snake. But it wasn’t just animals or living things. An Oklahoman college student ate a deflated football. An Oregon State student ate 129 angle worms and won $5. Another student ate the cover off of a baseball. And someone else ate the covers off of magazines. Then there were marathon eating contests, like people would eat lots of eggs or oysters or hamburgers in one sitting. And so my theory is that this expression may stem from this fad of sending your kid off to college for education, but instead all they do is these eating stunts. Just a guess.

That about sizes up.

I believe that that’s, it works around that. It was funny because, like I said, I’d never connected all of those things. And if you do a general search, it doesn’t really go into that much history. But that beams in right around the time that he would have been in his 20s or late 20s, and those things would have definitely been in his mind.

Well, thank you so much. I’m glad you can answer that question. It’s been puzzling me for years.

All right. Take care now. We appreciate it, Timothy. Thanks for calling. Have a great day.

Bye-bye.

All right. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

The years we’re in school are some of the best times for new language. We pick up most of our slang, a lot of old sayings, fun things we put in the back of yearbooks, stuff that just pops up. You’ll be doing the dishes. You’re like, I haven’t thought of that in 30 years. Well, this is the place to share that thing you haven’t thought of in 30 years. 877-929-9673. Or that thing you learned yesterday, words@waywordradio.org.