Hawaii Five-0

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name’s Andrea. I’m calling from San Diego.

Hello, Andrea. Welcome.

Hi, Andrea. Welcome.

Hi, thanks for having me.

What can we do for you?

Well, I was wondering how the nickname 5.0 for the police got started.

I’ve heard that it’s from the television show Hawaii 5.0, and my boyfriend was very adamant in saying no. It’s because of the Ford Mustang 5.0 engines that police officers used to drive. So I thought, is it one of those two or is it something else altogether?

Is your boyfriend around?

He’s not.

Let me just say this and you can pass this on to him.

Yes.

Yes, she says.

It’s not from the car. It is from the television show.

It is.

It’s hard to imagine this point in American history where we had basically four channels, but we did. And so when Hawaii Five-0 was on the air in the 60s and the 70s, it was big stuff.

Oh, so big.

So big.

I mean, I am reaching for my flute right now because how many of us played the Hawaii Five-0 theme song in marching band? There’s only one hand up.

There’s only one hand up here, Martha. But the theme song, it’s like the earworm of all time, right?

Oh, my God.

And, you know, I’ll give a free plug to whatever network, but, you know, they’ve got the new one now. Hey, you know, it’s not bad. I was watching it. The Jimmy Conson’s on there. Grace Park, Daniel Day Kim. It’s good stuff.

Yeah.

So that’s how this question got started. We were sitting there watching it one night and started wondering, where did that nickname come from? Could it really have come from a television show?

It is from the show. And what’s really interesting about this, it comes from the show. It doesn’t show up until the show is in reruns, basically. It shows up like in the late 80s, early 90s in neighborhood slang. And I don’t mean that as a euphemism for black. I’m just meaning from like guys on the street, whoever they happen to be, shows up as just a reference to the cops because it’s a lot of street slang is about euphemizing real life. It’s kind of like having an indirect way to say something so people aren’t quite sure if they’re an outsider, what you’re really saying.

And so it shows up. And then by the early 90s, it starts appearing in slang dictionaries and little slang collections and then entered the mainstream when, you know, television eats itself, basically.

You know, so tell us. So Hawaii Five-0 is the name of the show. It starts being used on the street. Five-0 used on the street to mean the cops or the police.

Right.

And then it shows up in the dictionaries and, you know, the cultural kind of indicating guides. And then television starts using it and other cop shows to refer to the cops.

Yeah.

And it’s kind of cool. It’s kind of meta. Will the circle be unbroken?

Let’s go back to Hawaii. Anyway, it does come from the television show, the original one with Jack Lord, which I remember watching. It is not from Mustangs. In the television show, the producer, Martin Freeman, named it Hawaii Five-0 because Hawaii is the 50th state.

50th state.

Yep.

Doi!

Yeah, that’s it. But interestingly, this is something that I really love the most about this, is that earlier this year, in July, CBS put a press release out that said the zero in Hawaii Five-O is a zero and not a capital O.

Stop the presses.

Because all the press were, the press was writing about this, right?

-huh.

And they were putting the wrong character. They were really putting an O.

Yeah, because we say O for zero, even though that’s technically wrong.

Yeah, Andrea, would you write it that way?

I think I would have.

Yeah, most people do, actually.

With an O.

I guess, I don’t know. Originally in my email about the question, I had put zero.

Yeah.

Oh, really?

Impressive.

So you’re good, yeah.

Impressive.

You’re all good, Andrew.

I had an instinct, I guess.

So you’re righteous all the way around. Wait until your boyfriend finds out about that.

Yeah, we’re all with the idea.

What’s new?

What’s new?

No, no. I see who has the upper hand here.

I like to pretend.

Anyway, so there you go. There’s your answer.

Awesome.

All right.

Well, thanks, you guys.

Okay.

Take care.

Bye-bye, Andrew.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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