Although the term laundry list originally specified a piece of paper detailing all the items in a load of clothing sent out to be washed and folded, the term now refers more generally to collections of various sorts of things. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Why Do We Say We Have a Laundry List of Things That Aren’t Laundry?”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette. We heard from Heidi Hebron Marshall, who writes,
I have a job being a fake patient for medical students taking exams. It’s a very interesting and fun job, and it’s especially interesting now that the students have to give us physical exams over Zoom. When the students start asking, have you had fevers, chills, night sweats, headaches, joint pain, etc., I always think, here comes the laundry list. And that got me to thinking,
What on earth is a laundry list? I definitely assume it’s a long written out list, but why would you need to write out a list, especially if someone else was doing your laundry for you? So why would she list a bunch of symptoms and call it a laundry list? There’s no laundry on there.
Correct. And the reason is that it goes back to a time when people of a certain class sent their laundry out to be cleaned. And, you know, it’s usually associated with things that are everyday or routine kind of drudgery. It’s not usually a positive connotation, is it? I mean, you don’t really get it.
No, there’s a little bit of a negative strike to it, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Laundry list of complaints is a common way to put it.
Yeah, as opposed to compliments. You don’t have a laundry list of compliments.
So, Heidi, thank you for your work. Somebody’s going to be grateful that you’re doing that.
If you’ve got a question about an everyday expression or word that suddenly strikes you as inexplicable, give us a call, 877-929-9673, or share your language stories or thoughts to us in email, words@waywordradio.org.
