Bob from Rockford, Illinois, recalls that forty years ago when he was in the Navy, his instructors would stamp their foot to emphasize a particular point that might be on the test later. They referred to this action as horsing up the students, and the students called their group study sessions horse sessions and referred to their large notebooks as horse notes. What do horses have to do with the curriculum studied by the Navy’s nuclear-power specialists? The answer may have to do with horse blankets. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Horsing Up in the Navy”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, yeah, I’m Bob Peterson. I’m from Rockford, Illinois.
Hi, Bob. Welcome to the show.
Well, thanks. I’m happy to be here.
We’re glad to have you. What’s on your mind?
Forty years ago, I was in the Navy. And, you know, the Navy has all kinds of nautical terms and stuff, but this is a little different.
I was in nuclear power school, and the amount of information you get presented is really pretty overwhelming. So some of the instructors would help us out, the students out a bit, by they’d stamp on the floor if they were presenting some information that was particularly testable.
You know, really, oh, yeah, you need six-factor formulas, startup rate equations, things like that that we really had to know long-term. They’d stamp on the floor.
Now, we referred to this as horsing up the students. When the students would get together after class and study and we’d throw questions at each other, we’d call them horse sessions.
And actually in civilian nuclear power, when I went through reactor operator license training, we had these large format notebooks we called horse notes. So I was just curious if you’ve ever heard of this term for tutoring or studying or whatever it was we were doing.
So your instructors would do a Mr. Ed and intentionally stamp the floor like they were conscious that they were doing it, and that was the clue that you really should pay some attention to what they’re saying.
Exactly. That this was really important. You needed to know this.
Your horse notes there at the end plugged into a theory that I started working on as soon as I heard your question. Did you ever have those big pads of paper, we’re talking like three feet by four feet, that were on easels in the front of the classroom that the instructor could write on?
Yeah, they had those. And the horse notes we used were large format that we made up.
How big?
And they were 11 by 17 notebooks. The reason I ask is because those big pads of paper used for presentation and display in front of a class or a group are sometimes known as horse blankets because they’re as big as a horse blanket.
Yeah. And so the theory that I’m working on is that the stamping like a horse came after the slang for horse blanket because you’re not putting everything on the horse blanket. You’re putting the outline or the bullet points. And so it’s kind of it’s the high points, the summary of what you really need to know.
And so I’m wondering if the stamping was either not directly connected to the idea of a horse or it’s coincidental or it came after the notion of the horse blanket, which goes back as far as I can tell, at least to the 1930s in military slang.
That’s interesting because I was actually a Navy instructor later on. And then in the civilian world, after I was an operator, I was an instructor. But by the time I did it, we had whiteboards and then PowerPoints.
There are other older, different meanings of horse up or to horse something or someone up, but they’re so different and far afield from what you’re talking about. I don’t think that they can be related, but for what it’s worth, one of the dictionaries that I checked has an entry for horse up is to put material between the planks of a ship, like oakum or something else, in order to seal it tight.
And that’s called horsing it up. And then in leather making or tanning of leather, there’s a part of the process where you horse up the wet or treated leather, which means put it on a sawhorse so that it can drain or so the chemical treatments can finish doing their work until you move on to the next step.
But other than that, the only other thing I can think of, there’s a lot of uses of to horse, meaning to use extra speed or to use extra strength or put a lot of energy into something. But again, it doesn’t really sound like this classroom.
So my speculation is it’s all a play on that original slang of a horse blanket referring to the thing that you put your big notes on, the important stuff.
Yeah, that would make a lot of sense because the instructors did do a lot of writing. That was 40 years ago. That was back before PowerPoint and even whiteboards.
Right. Well, Bob, the great thing is that we have a lot of Navy folks who listen to the show.
We do indeed. And they might call us and provide some more input.
Yeah, well, actually, my son’s in the Navy currently, and I’ve never asked him that.
Oh, well, there we go. There we go. I’ll have to ask him next time.
If you find out more from your son, send it along, all right?
I certainly will. Bob, thank you for your call. We really appreciate it.
Well, thanks so much. I appreciate it. Take care.
Bye-bye.
All righty. Bye-bye, Bob.
Yeah, we’ve got Navy retired and active on both coasts and stationed in various places around the world. And so if you’re in the Navy and you know more about the expression to horse someone or something up, referring to, I guess, the way of emphasizing what’s important in a course of study or in, I guess, an exam prep or something like that, let us know.
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