Jeepers creepers! Pass the gleepers! Mary in Albuquerque, New Mexico, wonders if anyone else uses the term gleepers to mean “a pair of tongs.” Gleepers may be just her own family’s term. Some people refer to them as clackers because of the noise they may when you open and close them. It’s perhaps unrelated, but the slang term gleep means “to steal.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Anybody Else Use the “Gleepers” to Mean “Tongs”?”
Hi, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Mary.
I’m from Albuquerque, New Mexico, and I have a question for you guys.
Excellent, Mary.
Welcome.
All right.
So I’m coming to ask a question about the kitchen implement that most people know as tongs. I grew up in the 80s, and my mother always called them gleepers. And so I grew up calling them gleepers. I never called them tongs. But nobody else in my life ever called them bleepers. And so this came up at Christmas just recently, and I decided to give you guys a call because I have absolutely no idea where it came from. My mother believes her sister invented it because we’re the only ones that we know that use it. So I was just wondering if there was any history to this word or if we did indeed invent it.
So, gleepers, G-L-E-E-P-E-R-S?
That’s what I would assume, yeah.
Okay, gleepers. My family word meter is pegging red right now. I think this is a family word. And there are lots of those, and there’s no shame in them, and they’re all really fun.
Martha, the only thing I can think of, and this is stretching it, but I’ll throw it out there for what it’s worth, is Martha and I both know a word called gleep, which at one time for a brief period in the history of American slang meant to steal. It was used in the movie The Wild One to mean to steal an automobile. It was used by motorcycle gangsters. And you might say, I’m going to gleep a cage, meaning to steal an automobile. So gleepers might be things used for taking or stealing something. But that’s really stretching it because it was never big. And I think all the slang dictionaries probably got their one mention of that word gleep from that one movie, that one time.
Okay.
You know, I’ve heard people call them clackers, but that makes more sense because you can’t help but when you pick up a pair of tongs to clack them a few times in your hands before you use them, right? I think there’s a law. It’s kind of like right there alongside the law of gravity that you have to clack tongs before you use them. Newton discovered, I think, the tongue clacking rule.
Yeah, I think that was his sixth law.
Well, that’s great. And, you know, Mary, if anybody else uses that, we’re going to hear about it. But I suspect Grant is right.
Thank you, Mary.
Oh, that’s great. Well, thank you guys so much. If we find out more, you’ll hear from us, all right?
All right.
Thank you so much. Take care. Bye-bye.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Share your family words with us. That thing that you say at home and nobody else in the world seems to know we want to hear about it. And maybe, just maybe, you aren’t the only ones.
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