I Got the Motts

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Amelia calling from Chicago.

Hey, Amelia, welcome to the show.

Okay, so I was talking to some co-workers the other day, and my one co-worker was telling us that she has a neighbor who’s a stand-up comedian. And this comedian was planning to perform a comedy show from her front lawn with the thinking that all the neighbors, you know, watch from their own windows or lawns, you know, because we’re all staying at home, social distancing.

And we were all kind of laughing about this, you know, thinking it could be a really cringy situation because there’s truly nothing worse than watching a comedy show that doesn’t land. And another co-worker of mine said, oh, yeah, I get some moths in those kinds of situations. And none of us knew what that meant.

And she explained that it’s a term she uses to mean that intense secondhand embarrassment where you’re burying your head in your hands and, like, can’t bring yourself to look at the train wreck going on. And I never heard that before, but I loved it because I definitely know that feeling. And I thought it could use a good descriptor word.

So I thought of you guys immediately and wondered if this was just something that my coworker created on her own or if it was something you’d heard before.

You got the mots.

Got the mots.

How old is your coworker? Tell us a little bit about your coworker. Who are they? Where are they from? Age and all that.

So my coworker and I are both from the Chicago area, the suburbs of Chicago. She’s in her mid-30s. I don’t know the expression to get the motts, to mean to be suffering from secondhand embarrassment or to feel cringy because of what someone else is doing or to be embarrassed for someone else.

We know the feeling, though, for sure. I know the feeling. It’s the reason I can’t watch Curb Your Enthusiasm. I can’t watch shows like that. I don’t care how good it is. I can’t watch it. I recognize that it’s a quality program with great acting and writing. Can’t watch it. No. Too much empathy, I guess. I don’t know.

However, I have something for you. I Got the Mott’s became a bit of a catchphrase because it was a Mott’s applesauce line from a commercial that started running in 1987.

Really?

Yeah. I Got the Mott’s. All right, in the commercial, a couple of kids are play acting at being spies or detectives or something like that. And they’re looking for the Mott’s applesauce as if it’s a hard to find precious object. And so there’s this moment in the commercial where this kid kind of dressed up like, you know, a gruff detective says, I got the Mott’s like that. He says in this way that just kind of gets in your brain.

Here we are with another commercial phrase becoming like this catchphrase for American culture that people pass on. You know, commerce giving us something in the language. But in the commercial, it’s not like an embarrassing situation.

No, although in itself it’s a little cringy because you’ve got to acknowledge that this commercial is trying to start a catchphrase, I think. I think they were looking for the new, you know, where’s the beef? I mean, this is the thing that advertising agencies try to do. They try to start a catchphrase so that the name or brand goes along with the catchphrase and passes through the culture and becomes a thing. But I got the Mott sounds like gastrointestinal distress, doesn’t it?

A little bit. I got the mott. Yeah, it sounds like I got the heebie-jeebies or I got the willies, right? I got the yips. It sounds like that. Yeah.

Anyway, so by 1989 it starts showing up in high school yearbooks as a slang item. This is one of my favorite places to find slang. You can look in yearbooks on archive.org and you can find slang. And so I find it in 89 and 90 and 91, 92, 93, 93, all the way up to 2005, variations on I got or you got the mots in student yearbooks is like their favorite phrase or something that they threw in their profile.

And so it was a thing, not a big thing, but it was something of a thing. You got the mots or I got the mots or he’s got the mots. Sometimes it’s contextless. We don’t know what they mean, but all of them seem to be reflecting this commercial in some way. It’s a little bit of a catchphrase.

Amelia, as you might expect, there is a German word for this feeling. It’s like we have schadenfreude for taking joy in somebody else’s suffering. And in German, the term is fremtscham, which sort of translates as foreign shame. It’s that feeling embarrassment for somebody else, fremtscham.

I’m so glad to know there is a word for that. Although I don’t know, Amelia, anyone else who uses Get the Mots to mean, you know, to get the cringes. I don’t know anyone else who uses it that way. But you know what? This is a big show with a big audience. Maybe other people will let us know. I use Get the Mots that way or I Got the Mots that way.

No, I’ll have to follow up with her and ask if she’s seen that commercial ever. I have no idea if it was just something that came up independently or got kind of adapted based on what she needed to work for.

Yeah, drop us a line and let us know.

Yeah, I’m betting it comes from the Mott’s apple sauce commercial. All right. Bye, Amelia. Thanks for calling.

Thanks.

Thank you so much.

Bye.

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