Last Straw vs. Last Draw

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Caitlin. I’m in San Diego.

Excellent. Well, what can we do for you?

So, this was a couple weeks ago. My boyfriend and I took our dog down on a hike down Sunset Cliff to take him to the beach.

And we were playing with the dog and my boyfriend was messing around with him and he said, oh, Finn, that’s the last draw.

And I paused for a second and I thought, oh, I said you meant the final straw, correct?

And he said, no, the final draw, like gunslingers in the Wild West.

And I said, I thought that it was the final straw. And then that brought us to the straw that broke the camel’s back.

And he said that there were two different things. So I was wondering if you could clear that up for us.

One thing I’ll say is we all have, how shall I put this, disfluencies, production errors, where things come out of our mouths that are grammatical, but they’re not exactly the thing that we were supposed to say or meant to say.

And maybe that’s what happened with him because final draw isn’t what almost anybody in the whole world would say when they meant that you’ve just done the very last thing that changes this all forever.

And kind of like, you know, it’s going to mean your doom. The final straw is what most or the last straw is what most people say.

OK, that’s what I thought. But he did have a whole explanation about the Wild West.

And, you know, when they say draw and pull their guns out. I mean, I get that. Humans are very good at making rationalizations for the mistakes that we’ve made.

And it sounds like that’s what he’s done here. But it’s the final straw or the last straw.

And it does come from the idea that, you know, you can put so much straw on a camel’s back and you can keep adding one straw at a time until it’s just too many straws and the animal collapses.

But you never know exactly when it’s going to be because each straw is so small and so light. But you know there’s an amount that will do the animal in.

But the older version of it, interestingly enough, is feathers on a horse.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah, the last feather breaking a horse’s back is even older and goes back to the 17th century.

Huh.

Yeah. That’s cool, right?

Well, thank you for clearing that up.

Yeah. But it’s all about, the notion is it’s all about these incremental changes or these incremental additions where any one of them is fine, but all of them together is too much.

Mm—

Okay.

Yeah, and I think you can take that back to your boyfriend in a way that lets him know that you think it is so cute the way he says the final draw.

And maybe it’ll be a thing between you that they’ll always be adorable.

Oh, maybe.

Well, after I told him that I called into you guys, he was like, well, you’re probably right. Don’t mention my name on the radio.

And what’s his name?

His name’s Jordan.

Jordan, all right.

And the dog is Finn?

Mm—

All right.

Well, it was really nice to talk to you, Caitlin. Let Jordan know that he’s welcome to call us with your errors anytime, all right?

Okay, I will.

Thank you so much.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Thanks.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

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