I Hosey That

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, my name is Patricia. I’m calling from Encinitas, California.

Well, hello, Patricia. What’s going on?

Well, I have a question about a word from my youth.

I grew up in New England in the east side of Massachusetts, and when we wanted something, rather than saying, I have dibs on it, we would say, I hosie that one.

Yes, dibs. I call it. That’s mine, right?

Yes.

Reserving it for yourself. That’s super duper.

Yeah, well, if you hadn’t told us, I would have asked you if you were from Massachusetts.

Really?

Oh, yes.

Okay, because my question, too, is I thought, oh, well, this is a regional thing.

But I talked to my brother-in-law who grew up in Southern California, and he’s kind of a geezer like me, almost a geezer.

And he grew up with that word, too, in Redlands, California.

In Redlands, California.

So that threw my whole theory off.

Wow.

Well.

Where are his people from, though?

From that area, though.

Oh, really?

I just think that he must have run into some kind of New England influence because it’s really strongly associated with Massachusetts and a little bit in Maine, too.

-huh.

For sure, yeah.

And where did it come from?

Well, that’s a great question.

We’re not so sure about that one.

But, you know, little kids have all kinds of cute little words for saying dibs or hosy, don’t they?

-huh.

Sure, yeah.

Who knows where they pick that stuff up?

A lot of it is just there’s a whole kid culture.

Some language is passed from kid to kid and kind of forgotten when you become an adult.

Yeah, yeah.

Some kids say shoddy.

Shoddy?

Shoddy, yeah.

How do you spell that?

S-H-O-D-D-Y because what they’re doing is they want to ride shotgun in the car.

Oh, sure, sure.

You know?

You know, when I was growing up, we used to, just specifically for where you were sitting, we would freeze our seats.

Like if you were watching television and you were going to get up to go to the kitchen or the bathroom and say, I freeze my seat.

And it was law that nobody could sit in your seat as long as it was frozen.

Because you’d hosied it by freezing.

I froze it.

I froze my seat.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We see whoosie and honie and honzie and hornzie.

And I’ve seen a couple of different theories about it.

The most likely, I think, is that it’s a variation of hold and holdsy and sort of a kiddy way of saying holdsy.

Well, because you might say for keeps or for keepsies.

And so you might say hold and holdsies.

And then it becomes hosy after a while because children corrupt things, right?

Just think the way that nursery rhymes vary in all the English-speaking countries of the world because they’re passed along from child to child.

And they don’t always get the words right.

And some new words kind of take their place because they sound about the same and they don’t know exactly what they’re saying.

Yeah.

So do you still use it today?

Well, with my sister I do, but nobody understands me here.

Well, that’s okay.

Secret language is good.

Yeah, that’s great.

Thanks for the answer to my question.

All right, Patricia.

Of course.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

You know, Grant, another great word I’ve seen like that is bony.

I wonder if I’m pronouncing it correctly.

I’ve only ever seen it in print.

I bony it?

Yeah, I bony it.

And apparently it’s closely associated with Wisconsin, and I know we have a lot of Wisconsin listeners, so maybe they can tell me how to say it.

Boom, there goes the phone system.

Tell us how to say it, how to pronounce it.

Is it bony?

I bony that seed?

Do you bony or hosy?

Let us know.

I freeze and I dib.

The number to call is 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-WAYWORD, or pop us an email, words@waywordradio.org.