Slap, slap, slap, slap– the sound of flip-flops on your feet. These floppy-soled shoes go by other names like zoris and thongs, but a caller wonders why in some parts of the country they’re called go-aheads. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Go-Aheads”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Maggie Winchell from Eden Prairie, Minnesota.
Hi, Maggie.
Hi, Maggie. What’s your language question today, Maggie?
My question is about a term that I used as a child, go-aheads.
Go-aheads.
Right.
Go-aheads?
It’s a term that we use for what is now called flip-flops.
Mm—
And when I grew up, I didn’t realize it was actually go-aheads, two words.
I thought it was just one term.
Go-aheads.
Right.
But it’s go-aheads because you cannot walk backwards in those shoes.
-huh.
-huh.
Now, Maggie, I have to ask, where did you grow up?
I grew up in Dubuque, Iowa.
Mm—
But it’s a term that my mother brought to us.
She grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Minnesota.
And where was your family in the 1940s?
My oldest sisters were born in San Diego.
My dad was in the service.
And one was born in Hawaii.
Ding, ding, ding.
There we go.
Wait, who was born in Hawaii?
My third oldest, fourth oldest sister.
There we go. There we have the connection.
Yep, yep.
What’s that?
Well, it’s quite common in Hawaii and also in California to call these things go-aheads, or at least it has been historically.
Yeah, some people still do, and it’s because of the large Japanese-American communities in both places.
This term tends to come out of Japan.
It’s especially common historically among servicemen who served in Japan or in the Far East.
Oh.
And it’s referred to over the years either to zoris.
Do you know this word, Z-O-R-I-S?
No, Z-O-R-I-S.
These are thongs or flip-flops, depending on your term, usually made out of straw or grass or reeds.
The soles were also straw grass or reeds, although sometimes they were wood.
And sometimes they referred to the getta, which is the traditional wooden sole Japanese sandal.
You’ve probably seen these in these historical movies about Japan, the women kind of hobbling around in these wooden shoes.
But they called them go-aheads for exactly the reason that you’re saying, because you can only move forward in them.
If you try to walk backwards, you’re going to find yourself barefoot.
Right.
It doesn’t work well.
But I asked about the 1940s because that’s when it first starts appearing in some war memoirs and historical memoirs by soldiers who served in the Far East.
And you start to see it show up in fashion columns in American newspapers in Los Angeles in the 1950s where they talk about things like capri pants and other kinds of summer clothes or beach clothes.
I have to confess, though, I never heard the term until in the last few years.
I’ve never heard, you know, it’ll fly out of my mouth without thinking, and people around me have no clue to what I am referring.
That’s always a fun experience, isn’t it?
Yeah.
But here’s the connection.
And the connection is that your family and you or you picked it up probably either from your father through his connections in the service or from being in Hawaii.
Right.
Yeah.
Well, thank you.
That’s interesting.
All right.
Thanks for bringing that up.
Thank you.
All right.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
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