Gorby

Hello, welcome to A Way with Words.

Hi there, this is Beth Harris and I’m calling from Mandeville, Louisiana.

Mandeville, Louisiana. Welcome to the show, Beth.

Thank you. My grandfather used to say this funny thing and I’ve never understood where it came from.

If you had a full gallon of ice cream in the refrigerator and then you woke up the next morning and most of it was gone, he would always say that the Gorby got it.

Oh.

Or if you were offered a cookie, but you took three or four as a little kid because, you know, you were greedy, then he would tell you to not be a Gorby.

What was he like? What was his background?

He was born in 1911, and his surname was McNeil. We grew up in Maine and very near the Canadian border.

So I’m thinking it’s maybe some sort of a Scotch-Irish kind of thing.

Yes, good instincts.

And so I always envisioned the Gorby as some sort of little gremlin who snuck in and ate whatever was yummy while you weren’t looking.

So like a mythical character, a monster or something, or a gremlin.

And then it could also sort of be used as a verb, too, that, you know, well, what happened to all the M&Ms? Well, so-and-so-and-so Gorby’d them all up.

Fascinating. I’ve never heard this word before, but it’s in the dictionary of the Scots language.

Gorb means a gluttonous person.

Hey.

How about that?

Well, that’s so cool.

Yeah. It may go all the way back to Scots word gorb, which means an unfledged bird that is a really, really young one.

You know how they have their little mouths open and the mother bird comes and feeds them?

When they’re in the nest.

Yeah, just really little and ravenous.

Well, that is pretty cool.

I’ve always wondered. I mean, I looked it up, and the only thing I could find for Gorby was Mikhail Gorbachev.

That was his nickname, which obviously has nothing to do with this.

Yeah, yeah, different Gorby, but G-O-R-B or G-O-R-B-I-E. It’s a Scots word.

Gorby.

The main connection is interesting to me on this.

So McNeil connects to the Scots that you found in the Dictionary of the Scots Language, Martha, right?

But in Maine, we have another dictionary, the Dictionary of American Regional English, which says that a gorby is a Canadian jay.

And jays are known to be greedy, kind of rapacious animals.

A bird.

A bird, yeah, the bird.

And most of the citations for gorby in the Dictionary of American Regional English are from Maine.

Very interesting.

So I wonder if there’s some kind of interplay here between the idea of the jay bird being greedy and also the old Scot’s term for a greedy person or thing possibly connected to baby birds.

That’s interesting.

So the gorby is the bird who comes and eats all the bird seed and shoves the other birds out of the way.

Yeah, you’ve seen jays kind of have way too much dominance over a bird feeder, right?

Interesting.

I grew up in Maine, but I’ve never heard anyone call a blue jay a gorby.

Well, it’s the Canadian, it’s the Canada jay. It’s not exactly the blue jay.

Oh, that’s entirely possible, too.

I mean, where he lived was way up in northern Maine, so there was a great deal of Canadian influence there.

Aha.

So do you use it now, Beth?

Yeah, I still do sometimes. My kids look at me like I’m crazy.

But it’s one of those things you hate to see fall out of youth.

Well, exactly. And I wonder how it goes over in Louisiana, too.

Well, it’s funny. There are a lot of ties between Louisiana and Maine, too.

Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

With the Cajuns and the Acadians.

Sure.

So I’ve seen a lot of names and a lot of words that are the same, but no one here has ever accused me of being a Gorby.

Well, congratulations, Beth. We’re glad you called.

Thank you so much. I really enjoy your show.

Oh, thank you.

Thank you. Take care.

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