When Julie and her sister were growing up in England and their grandmother saw them giggling over something, her grandmother would say You girls would laugh to see a pudding crawl! The phrase suggested that they’d laugh at anything. It evolved from an earlier expression It would vex a dog to see a pudding creep, suggesting the frustration of a hungry dog that has to stay back and watch a sausage while it cooks. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Laugh to See Pudding Crawl”
Hi, you have A Way with Words.
Good morning. This is Julie in San Antone, Texas.
Well, hello, Julie. Welcome to the show.
When I was a little girl in England, you know how little girls get fits of giggles where they just can’t stop?
My grandmother would say, you girls would laugh to see a pudding crawl.
Well, you know, in England, pudding is not custard.
It’s like a heavy cake, like, say, plum pudding or something like that.
And I just couldn’t imagine a pudding crawling across the floor.
Were ants carrying it?
Was it possessed?
What was going on?
I thought that was a strange way of putting things.
So it was laugh to see a pudding crawl, meaning that you would laugh at anything?
Yes, yes.
Well, versions of this are about 400 years old.
Would you believe that?
Really?
Wow.
Yeah. The original verb was to creep rather than to crawl. Laugh to see the pudding creep.
And originally, the other verb was vex. And the expression more specifically was, it would vex a dog to see a pudding creep. And what this meant was that a dog would be frustrated to see food cooking instead of being able to eat it.
This is my interpretation.
It’s really kind of a tangled history.
Because as you noted, a pudding isn’t, as Americans know it, as people in the United States, we think of like a custard pudding, something you eat with a spoon.
But this is even older than like the pudding as you described it.
This is pudding which is more like a sausage made of innards and other animal bits or some other kind of prepared meat item or a savory pie.
Or some kind of seasoned stuffing.
A pudding was not necessarily a dessert at all or anything, any kind of treat.
It could just be a standard food item about 400 years ago.
So, and then the creeping verb is explained because if it is a sausage, or if it is cooking, it’s getting smaller, and the dog would be perfectly happy to eat it raw with no cooking at all, but the human has to cook it, and the dog is sitting there vexed.
The thing is shrinking.
The sausage casing is tightening, and the dog just wants to wolf it down.
Oh, my goodness.
Generally, so it’s weird, yeah?
So it goes from vex a dog to see a pudding creep, to laugh to see a pudding creep, to laugh to see a pudding crawl.
And then there’s another offshoot of that, which is it means it’s what would shock me would make a pudding crawl, and it means it takes a lot to shock me.
So it’s just a little different still.
So it’s a strange…
I’ve never heard it anywhere but in England.
Yeah, it’s very much a Briticism.
Yeah, it’s not something you hear in the United States.
You might come across it in Australia, but it is very British.
That is an amazing explanation of that particular phrase.
I mean, I just always wondered, even as a grown-up, I thought, that is really weird.
You’re right, it is.
Oh, well, thank you so much for explaining that.
I have learned a whole lot today.
All right.
Take care now.
Be well.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
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