Husky as in Solid, not Husky as in the Hairy Dog

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Chris Jorgensen calling from Omaha, Nebraska.

Hey, Chris, welcome. What can we do for you?

So, you know how it’s back-to-school time, and my husband is a teacher.

And he was recently shopping for his back-to-school clothes.

And he was in JCPenney here in Omaha, and when he came home, he was like, Chris, he’s like, you’re not going to believe which section still exists at JCPenney.

And I was like, I don’t know what you’re talking about, Matt. He said, he said, did you know that there is still a Husky boys section in JCPenney? And we kind of we kind of laughed about it. and And he and I and we were both shocked because we had assumed that this was like a relic of our 1980s childhood that must have gone out of existence by now.

So, and of course, as we were talking about it, we realized like, like sort of unkind children in the 1980s might think like it could be like sort of an insulting thing, right?

To say you were shopping in the Husky Boys section.

And, but as we talked about it more, I was like, well, it certainly couldn’t have been intended to be an insulting thing.

I mean, these folks are trying to sell people clothes.

Like you don’t want to name a clothing section after something that you like don’t want to be associated with.

So we thought, well, what does this Husky thing even refer to?

And so like every, you know, modern person, we went to Google and tried to figure it out, and we couldn’t.

And so that’s when Matt and I said, well, we should probably call Away With Words and see if they know anything about this.

Outstanding. That was the right call.

I have personal experience with the Husky section.

I was tall, so going to stores like JCPenney’s when I was a kid was always this struggle.

Because I was too thin for the husky section, but too tall for the other section.

So it was this real battle.

But I’m with you.

I remember the husky section, and there definitely was a little bit of a kind of judgment happening there.

It seemed like a coded way to say fat.

Right, right.

Yeah.

But again, I just think, well, we had a long sort of feminist discussion about this, too,

Where I was like, well, of course we can have boys who are husky, and that’s something we sort of celebrate, right?

Like they’re going to, they’re big and strong and strapping, but, you know, we wouldn’t have a girls section with that name.

So again, I had to have some positive names.

Although you had the petite section for the girls, which would never show up in the boys section.

You would never have a petite section for boys, ever.

True.

But let’s go back to husky and what’s happening here with that word. It originally was a term for somebody with strength and vigor and somebody who was stout or burly. And it was by comparison to the husk of a plant, the strong outer core of a plant that you might have to peel away to get to the soft goodness inside.

So it was a positive thing, you know, to refer to somebody as husky meant that they were maybe sinewy or muscular, strong, big. But definitely no connotations in the early days, back to the 1860s, having to do with fatness. But, you know, as coded words go, husky kind of falls, you know, by the wayside over the years because of that connotation.

Whether or not stores can keep up with the language, I don’t know, but they have their own vocabulary. In any case, the other huskies are different. The husky referring to size or strength isn’t related to the dog husky. The dog husky is actually a corruption of the same word that gave us Eskimo, the word Eskimo, which is this outdated term for the native people of Canada.

So you can hear it a little bit how husky sounds a little bit like Eskimo, but they both go back to native words. So, yeah, and then, of course, there’s the husky voice, and that husky voice is related to the husky size. The idea that your voice sounds maybe like the rattling of husks or dry, like the husks of a plant.

Oh, my gosh. You know, that’s wild because, of course, you know, Nebraska is the corn husker state. So the fact that—

I was going to say, yeah.

Yeah, exactly. But, yeah, if you think about dried corn husks, they’re strong. They’re actually—you can build things with them. You can make hats and chairs and all kinds of clothes out of them if you want to. Incredibly strong.

Yeah, that is fascinating. Yeah. Well, do you think there’s any chance that we could reclaim this husky word? Like some other terms have been reclaimed and we can, you know, proudly declare ourselves to be husky because nobody can mess with us because we’re so tough.

Well, the only way to find out is to start. So go for it.

Okay, I’ll work on that revolution. Chris, thank you so much for calling. We appreciate your time. Take care of yourself.

Thank you so much. Yeah, you all have a great day.

You too.

Bye-bye.

We love hearing about your personal stories and the histories that you have and these little arguments in the family that aren’t really about anger, but are really about finding out things. Come to us. We’ll help you find out. 877-929-9673 or email words@waywordradio.org.