You Have a Goat’s Mouth

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Lynn Bowles from Currituck, North Carolina.

Hey, Lynn. We’re glad to have you. What’s up?

I had a question about a saying my mom used to say to me when I was a little kid.

I went up to her one day and I asked her if she had heard from her brother.

And she said, no, why? I said, I don’t know.

So then a few days later, he called her.

She told me, she says, you have a goat’s mouth.

And I was kind of wondering what the meaning of that was.

So goat’s mouth as in the animal, G-O-A-T?

Yeah, I’m assuming.

I mean, that’s what she would say.

Yeah.

What did you take away from that when she said you had a goat’s mouth?

What do you think she meant by it?

I’m not sure.

Okay.

Exactly.

It was kind of a joke between me and her.

Yeah, it’s an expression, though.

It’s actually a thing.

Well, these days it’s mostly in the English and French Creoles of the Caribbean.

There are lots of different sayings that are about goat’s mouth, where you were said to have a goat’s mouth if you say something and then it comes true.

Or you mention someone and then they appear.

Or you call someone to have bad luck because you predicted something else would happen.

It’s kind of like in the United States, we knock on wood in order to stop something from happening.

And so there’s a lot of superstition and folklore and proverbs that are about not mentioning a thing or else it will happen or the devil will notice.

But yeah, so it appears in Jamaica and almost all the Caribbean islands, whether they have a French or English base and on the island of Mauritius off the coast of Africa.

They also use a version of it.

That’s interesting.

I wonder where she picked that up.

I’m not sure exactly, but it was just something that we always, you know, because I would do it randomly growing up.

I’d ask her about something, and then she’s like, you’ve got a goat’s mouth, you know, because it happened, what I had mentioned.

It’s entirely possible that she picked it up through just the long history of the interplay between different cultures,

Because the Dictionary of Caribbean Usage by Richard also makes a very strong case that it comes from African languages,

Which is like Yoruba.

And it’s entirely possible that enslaved black people brought it over from Africa

And it passed into the larger culture from there.

Oh, okay. That’s interesting.

So, Lynn, how are you with lottery numbers?

Not good.

I wish I was better.

She’s calling us from her mansion, Martha.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, well, my grandmother used to read tea leaves.

Okay.

So maybe it’s like inherited or something.

Yeah, it could be something she picked up from somebody else in the tea leaf reading business.

Right.

Lynn, thank you so much for sharing this with us.

We really appreciate it.

Yes, thank you so much for letting me ask that question.

Sure. Take care of yourself. Bye-bye.

You too. Bye-bye.

What’s the saying that your family uses that you’re really, really curious about?

Call us or write us. 877-929-9673.