Go Gunny Bags

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, Martha.

Hello, Grant.

Hello.

This is Miley calling from the Dalles, Oregon.

The Dalles.

I am calling to ask you about a phrase that my mother uses that really struck me recently.

So we were sitting having a chat and coffee and she suddenly held up her hand and said, “Hold on, my hearing aids are going gunny bags on me.”

I know exactly what she meant by that. She’s used that phrase for various things. But it struck me then, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone else use that phrase.

And what are gunny bags? And what do they have to do with her hearing aids not working? And so I thought I would love to talk to you about that.

Her hearing aids went gunny bags, meaning they went haywire or they became broken?

Yes.

So I knew that she meant they stopped working.

Stopped working.

And yes, I’ve always heard her use that primarily with, I always felt like mechanical things that weren’t functioning properly. Like, oh, the dishwasher is going gunny bags or gone gunny bags. And I knew that meant the dishwasher wasn’t working.

But I asked her about it recently, and she said, oh, no, it’s not just mechanical things. It just means anything that doesn’t work.

And Miley, you all are from Oregon?

No, not originally. I grew up early on in Ohio, but my mother actually was, her father was in the military.

So she grew up all over. And I asked her, you know, where do you think you picked that up?

And she said, oh, I just picked it up at home. And I said, is it a military term? It sort of have that flavor to me. But she said, oh, gosh, I think my mother used to say it more often.

So that’s what I heard from her. Oh, it’s so interesting because, you know, it’s not all that common to go gunning bags, meaning to become broken, to fail suddenly. So you can say this about people who go a little nutso. You can say this about machines that stop working. You can say this about plans that fail to work, or you can say this about a situation that just erupts into chaos, to go gunnybags. And so typically when you see it written out, it’s G-U-N-N-Y-B-A-G-S, usually is one word, always plural, and sometimes is two words. And what we’re talking about here are usually given as gunny sacks in other forms.

A gunny sack is made of, Martha, what would you call this? Kind of a coarse fabric.

Gunny is a fabric that originally was made of, is this jute? Is this kind of originally from India? And actually the word originally comes from Indian languages, as in the continent of the country of India.

So it’s a little bit of a pleonasm. Gunny means sack. So gunny sack means sack sack. Kind of redundant.

Redundant, yeah.

But used to be in the countryside, you would have these anywhere. Maybe you would pack grain in them or straw or just kind of a multipurpose bag that you would just use around the farm.

But it’s weird that it would go gunny bags. I mean, what’s negative about?

Well, I have a couple of clues, and that is that in the Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles, there is an entry, and it’s the verb to gunnybags something. And what it means is to put out a fire with gunnybags.

And what you do is you beat a fire with gunnybags to put it out.

And I don’t know that it’s related, but it’s the best hint that I have.

And my suspicion is that somewhere in there, there’s a connection that to go gunny bags means to, to get so desperate to a situation that you’re resorting to the gunny bags as your last ditch remedy to, to, to solve it, to fix it.

This absolutely otherwise multi-purpose item becomes your your tool that you know for some reason it’s kind of like when things go haywire.

Things go haywire because a hay piece of haywire wire used to bale hay gums up the machine.

You know this otherwise innocuous piece of this piece of metal gums up a really expensive bit of equipment.

So it’s just I don’t know I’m just in there somewhere, I think it’s an intersection of a gunny bag.

Yeah, yeah.

I’m thinking about the frantic action of trying to put out a fire with a sack.

You know, it’s just kind of chaos and frantic.

And yeah, I could see how that would be.

I don’t know.

It does feel very urgent in a way when something goes gunny bags.

We need to fix it right now, particularly with hearing aids and things like that.

We need to get it fixed now.

There’s one other interesting note to this, and that is there is a fiction author by the name of Judith Jance, J-A-N-C-E.

And she has the earliest use of this I can find, 1993, in her novel Failure to Appear.

But not only does she have the earliest use of this I can find, she uses it in novel after novel.

And I just wonder if there’s something about Judith Jantz and this expression.

And she was raised in Arizona, I believe.

I just wonder if there’s something about her that spread this expression.

There must be, because my mother is a great, great reader, and I know that she has read all of Judith Jantz’s novels.

Oh!

That is exact. She thought it came from her mother, but I betcha it came from those books.

That’s amazing!

There’s like six or seven of them that use this expression to go gunny bags.

Oh, that would make so much sense.

Amazing.

A lot more people are going to be using it after this call, I’m sure.

It’s a great expression.

It really is, to go gunnybags.

It’s very useful.

And it’s got an internal rhythm to it as well, to go gunnybags.

Yes, or went gunnybags.

It’s going gunnybags.

So you know it’s going south there.

So thank you so much.

This was such a delight to speak with you, and my mom and I both enjoy your work so much, and we so appreciate you.

That’s really nice.

Thank you so much.

Yeah.

Give her our best.

Have a wonderful day.

You too.

Take care of yourself.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Give our best to your mom.

Thank you.

I will.

Bye-bye.

Call us and tell us what you know about Gunny Bags, 877-929-9673, or send any question at all about language to words@waywordradio.org.