Transcript of “You Got the Botts and There’s a Buzzing”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, this is Martha calling from Rock Hill, South Carolina.
Well, hey, Martha, we’re glad to have you.
Well, I have a word that is from my childhood, and I don’t know the origin of it. I’m guessing at the spelling, the word is box. And I don’t know, I’ve never seen it written, so I don’t know if it has one T or two T’s. But it was always used as if you were pouting, they would say, don’t bother her. She’s got the box. And I was a very sensitive child, so I pouted a lot. And it was more often used with me than any other of the siblings around. But anyway, it’s B-O-T or B-O-T-T-S, not sure which.
My grandfather was a doctor. My grandmother was a registered nurse. I did not know if it was a medical term. Another of my daddy’s favorites was she’s got a tail over the dashboard. So I think maybe they may be similar. And then my sister recently told me, and I’ve never heard this, that it stood for butt on the shoulder.
Yeah.
Have y’all heard of the butt? Butt on the shoulder.
Well, your sister made that up out of whole cloth or gotten it from somewhere unreliable because bot is bot. It is sometimes spelled with one T or two, B-O-T. And it’s the same bot that is in the word botfly because the bot is the larva of the botfly. These are absolutely annoying farmyard insects. They will lay their eggs to an animal’s coat. There’s a bunch of different species, but often a horse’s coat and the horse will lick it and maybe ingest it somehow. And then the larvae attach the lining of the stomach and intestines of the horse and they get sick. They can cause colic and other things. Sometimes it can kill them. And so you do not want botflies on your farm or on your land. They’re bad news.
This is why you’ll do a variety of dips and sprays and other things. In any case, so this idea of this horse disease, although there’s a version, like I say, for sheep and other ones, this became more generalized when applied to humans, to any kind of ailment that you couldn’t name, including feeling down or sullen or moody, where you’re just overall feeling kind of rough, but you don’t know why. Or you haven’t explained it to other people why you’re feeling bad, badly. And so, yeah, and this is interestingly also common in Australia and New Zealand. They have a couple different variations down there.
Oh, wow.
Well, that’s interesting. That sure clears that mystery up. And I will tell my sister this too, that she’s laboring on depression.
Yeah.
So a horse disease that became generalized and kind of in a joking, figurative way applied to humans.
Okay.
Well, that sounds good. I’m so surprised and so happy that y’all could work this out for me. I’ve often wondered about it. You mentioned the tail over the dashboard. We can address that one, too. That has to do with a horse in an old horse-drawn carriage that has a dashboard in front of the person who’s holding the reins. If you keep your tail over the dashboard, then you’re perky like a horse. So those are two horse-related terms.
Okay.
Well, I’ll definitely tell my daughter and son-in-law because they have horses. And then my daddy was of the generation that when his father, the doctor, went out on a house call, my daddy would go with him and hitch the horses to the wagon and drive him and bring him back home again. So that makes sense, too.
There you go.
Yeah.
Well, gosh, y’all wizards. I’m just, I love your program. Really impressed.
Well, Martha in South Carolina, it’s our pleasure. We appreciate it. You call again sometime, all right?
Well, y’all have a good rest of the day, and thank you for making mine.
All right.
Take care of yourself.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
