Irish Expression for “Get Over It”

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Carol calling from Washington, D.C.

Hi, Carol. Welcome to the show.

How can we help?

When I was a little girl, I have two sisters. If something happened to my sisters or myself, if we fell and scratched a knee or scratched an elbow, my father would say as we were weeping, “Don’t worry, it will be better before you’re married.”

Which, of course, we would respond to, but Daddy, what happens if we don’t get married? But he said this repeatedly, and we have no idea where it came from.

I like that. That’s great.

So you’re carrying on, you’re like crying maybe a little too much, kind of like a soccer player pretending to be injured, right?

Exactly. Exactly. You know, we’re just in a puddle of tears, and his response is not to worry. It’ll be better before you’re married.

Because if you were about to be married, like having a giant scab on your knee might be a problem.

Exactly. You wouldn’t look good in your wedding day.

But you’re like seven. You’re not like 27. And about to be married.

Oh, man. Is that classic deflection? I mean, you stopped thinking about your knee, right? You started thinking about your chances.

Oh, that’s possible. Yes, we did. We were always, yes, yes, we moved on to think about our chances.

But the point is, it’s not a life-threatening injury. You’re going to survive. It’s not a big deal. Zip it, right? That’s basically what he’s saying?

Yes. I mean, you think sympathetic, but basically get over it.

Yeah. It’ll be better before you’re married. I love it.

You know, are you from, do you have Irish heritage? Perhaps? So he’s from Ireland.

That’s so interesting. Oh, there we go. There we go. Oh, interesting. I don’t know where I picked it up. Maybe there’s the Tania French, Tanya French. How do you say her name? Anyway, there’s some Irish detective novels I’ve been reading. I wonder if I picked it up there.

It’s because the Irish use this more widely than Americans, but obviously we have such an Irish-American heritage here. I’m not surprised to find it kind of pockmarking the map of the United States in terms of people who use it. But it is well known in Ireland.

To me, and I have Boston Irish on one branch of my family. It’s the kind of humor that they would use. You give people a hard time for like being less than strong, really. I mean, when they’re down, you give them a little kick, actually. Skin the other knee. Skin the other knee. I don’t know. But in my mind, that’s what I’m thinking. Does that mean anything at all to you, Carol?

You know, he is Irish. He came from Ireland in the 50s as a young man. And he didn’t have a lot of Irish sayings left in him, but it does make sense. I mean, you know, they’re a hardy people. They survived rough times.

And, you know, I’ve never heard one of his siblings, who many of them stayed in Ireland, use it. But I bet they did.

So he’s around still?

No. Unfortunately, he passed away a few years ago. But, you know, most of my family is in Ireland, so I’m 100% Irish. My mother also came from Ireland.

And they came here and immediately went to Miami, which is not your traditional Irish path.

No, no. There should have been a stopover in Brooklyn or something, right? You know, or Boston, right?

Yeah. No, but they went to Miami. So I got to grow up in Miami, which was always a lot of fun.

And, Carol, do you use the expression yourself now?

Of course.

Okay. All right. You know, when I would say it to my son, he would look at me like, what are you talking about, Mary? But, you know, my sisters and I, and we’re in our 50s, we say it to each other when something goes wrong.

Right. Interesting. And we’re married.

I was going to say, what happens after you’re married?

Oh, yeah. You could still use it.

Yeah. And there’s a memory of your father attached to it, right?

Oh, that’s really sweet. That is sweet. It’ll be better before you’re married.

Yeah, so it works with teenage boys, too, right?

I was going to say, I have a seven-year-old who doesn’t even know what’s coming. I’m going to drop that on him, Carol.

You’re going to start using it.

Thank you so much. I hope we helped a little bit.

Yeah, it probably comes from his Irish heritage. It is widespread. That’s about the most we know.

Thank you.

Yeah, sure. Thanks, Carol. Take care now. Bye-bye.

Love the show.

Thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Well, we’ve talked about this before. You know, there are the things that a dictionary says about a word or a phrase, kind of the meaning and the pronunciation, maybe the etymology.

But what it doesn’t include is this whole cultural notion that goes along with it. And it doesn’t have your personal reflections. Wouldn’t you love to have a dictionary that had a few lines after every entry so you could write your own notes about that entry?

And it’s kind of what Carol shared with us, her own notes about this particular part of language.

Right, a dictionary with heart.

Yeah. Yeah. That’s awesome. That’s beautiful. Let’s go do that.

How can we do that? See you later, guys. Is there an app for that?

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