Know Someone From Adam’s Off Ox

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Grant, Martha.

I’m Betty Wooten, and I’m calling from Georgetown, Kentucky, about an expression that my mother used, Adam’s off ox, as in, he didn’t know me from Adam’s off ox. I’ve never heard anyone else say that. When I was a child, I thought she was saying, Adam’s all fox, which made no sense to me. Later, I discovered it was Adam’s off ox. Still made no sense. I did a little oxen research and found out that in a yoke of oxen, you have a lead ox and an off ox. So I guess the poor off ox is less knowable than the lead. I do not understand this expression, and I thought perhaps you all might know something about it.

Betty, you’ve already done some really good work on it. You’re exactly right. Adam’s off ox refers to the image of somebody using a pair of oxen to pull a plow. And we’ll get back to that in a second. But it’s worth knowing, have you ever heard the expression, I don’t know him, from Adam?

Yes.

Okay, well, yeah, that expression goes back to at least the 1700s. And, of course, that idea is, I don’t know him from Adam, that ancestor so distant that you’d never recognize him. If Adam walked into the room, you would have no idea who he was. He’s that distant in history. You wouldn’t know who Adam is.

And what’s fun about that expression, Betty, is that over the centuries, people have elaborated on that expression in one way or another. People will say, I don’t know him from Adam’s house cat, or I don’t know him from Adam’s brother, or Adam’s foot. I don’t know him from Adam’s pet monkey. I don’t know him from Adam’s Aunt Bessie. So people have fooled around with that expression.

And another way of elaborating it is the one that you used, Adam’s off ox. And as you suggested, it refers to the driver of the oxen walking on the left side of a plow or a wagon. And so he’s walking on the left side and the near ox, the one on the left, is closer to him. He knows better how that ox behaves. And the off-ox is the one on the other side, the right-hand side. And so if you don’t know somebody from Adam’s ox or Adam’s off-ox, you really, really don’t know them at all.

Oh, that’s fun. I love all the variations.

Oh, well, thank you. That’s so interesting. I appreciate learning a little more about this. Betty, thank you so much for calling us about this. Call us again sometime, will you?

Thank you.

I’d love to.

Bye-bye.

All right. Take care of yourself.

Thanks, Betty. We have a toll-free number that works in Canada and the United States. It’s 1-877-929-9673. We’ve got numbers that work in Mexico and the UK that you can find on our website at waywordradio.org. And we’ve got WhatsApp and Skype contacts that you can use from anywhere in the world. You can also find those on our website at waywordradio.org.