A listener in Enterprise, Alabama, recalls that when a storm was approaching, his grandfather would say, “It’s going to come up a Joe Moore.” The slang term Joe Moore comes from the word mojo, meaning a magic spell or magic power. By metathesis, which is what linguists call the transposition of letters or sounds in a word, mojo became jomo, and ultimately Joe Moore. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Why a Storm Might “Come Up a Joe Moore””
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, this is Sonny Reagan. I’m calling from Enterprise, Alabama. How are you?
Hey, doing well, Sonny. It’s great to hear from you.
What can we do for you?
I live, obviously, in South Alabama, home of the Bowieville Monument, the only monument to an insect.
So we have an interesting culture, but when I was growing up as a young child, my grandfather would have a saying.
And when there would be, for example, a big thunderstorm that was approaching or some bad weather, he would say, it’s going to come up a Joe Moore.
And I have never heard that before, so he always referred to bad weather as a Joe Moore.
And I didn’t know who in the world Joe Moore was or if it was a reference to some historical figure or if he just made it up.
Oh, boy. I have an answer for you, if you’re interested. Or we could just end it here.
I’m extremely interested.
All right. I’m going to throw a bit of linguistic jargon at you on the way to explaining this, but we’ll figure it all out, all right?
Joe Moore is actually a term that’s been recorded as if it were a person’s name, J-O-E-M-O-O-R-E, Joe Moore.
And what it turns out to be is the word mojo, M-O-J-O, transformed by a process known as metathesis, where the syllables get rearranged.
And what you were hearing was when he was talking about bad weather, he was talking about a spell.
Bad weather being a spell of weather that was kind of like bad mojo coming down the line, right?
Coming over the hills.
And we have Joe Moore and Joe Moe, J-O-M-O, recorded in Georgia and Florida and North Carolina and a few other places in the South as a way of referring to Mojo.
Interesting, right?
That’s great.
Yeah.
So my grandfather had some Mojo himself, I suppose.
He did, yeah.
So it’s the word Mojo kind of transformed by Metaphysis into Joe Moe and kind of misunderstood as Joe Moore.
Well, I’m finally glad to have an answer to the question that I can share with my family.
After all these years, we’ve been wondering what in the world a Joe Moore actually was.
And now it’s just mojo.
And I love that you’ve got a field report here for us from a part of the country where using the word Joe Moore in that way makes a lot of sense.
It fits perfectly into what we already know about the term.
Well, you’ve been most helpful, and I love your show, and I listen to it all the time, and I really appreciate your answering the question.
It was our pleasure to talk to you.
Thanks for calling.
Thank you, Sonny.
You’re welcome.
Have a good day.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
Take care.
Bye.
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