Laundry List

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Laura calling from Hamburg, Germany.

Hi there, Laura. Welcome to the program.

Hamburg, Germany.

Hi. It’s nice to be on.

What are you doing there?

I’m actually an English teacher.

Oh, that’s pretty cool.

What can we help you with?

Well, I have a question for you about the term laundry list.

It came up, I was having a chat with my boss, actually, over lunch, and, yeah, it came up in conversation.

And I was just thinking about the fact that although I know the meaning of it, I don’t actually know where it came from.

I don’t know the origins of the term.

So I’m curious about that.

You mean in what sense?

How would you be using the term?

It comes up when you’re talking about like a long, drawn-out list, a detailed list of something.

Right, yeah.

Generally in kind of negative, it has a negative connotation to it.

I mean, say that you have like a laundry list of complaints or grievances or something.

Yeah, if it’s not negative, it’s at least really boring, right?

Yeah, also that, yeah, absolutely.

That’s right.

You don’t bring somebody a laundry list of compliments, do you?

No, no.

And you don’t say, like, oh, I have a laundry list of reasons I want to go to Hawaii or do something nice for myself.

That’s true.

I never thought about that.

A laundry list of reasons.

I do have a laundry list of reasons.

Bikini, sarong, flip flops.

That’s my laundry list.

That’s top of the list, then?

Boy.

But why do we use laundry lists?

Because most of us don’t do laundry like that, right?

We don’t need to make a list.

I mean, I’ve made things like long shopping lists, long grocery lists.

I’ve never, ever thought about making a laundry list at all.

Here’s the story on this.

In a short kind of little historical nutshell, there was a time when it was far more common for you to send your laundry out to be done if you were of a certain class.

You were probably less likely to have a washer and dryer in your own home, and yet you were of a means that you could afford to send out to have it done.

So just picture this period when washers and dryers weren’t completely the ordinary thing in the home.

And yet you still have money.

You’re not going to do your own laundry.

And so the thing is you send your laundry out.

Now, if you’re sending it out to be done just as you would with dry cleaning today, you kind of want to make sure you get all your shirts back, right?

Yeah.

So it’s their job probably.

Sometimes you could do it, but you can see this all in newspapers and books and everywhere and old books and fiction and nonfiction and so forth.

Usually the laundry person would make a list for you and give it to you, either on the spot, like they would sort through your stuff right there, or at the end.

Or at some point you’d get a list and you’d know what to look for.

They’d give you the carbon and they would take the master.

So it would be a printed form.

Well, I have one here.

You can find this on Google Books.

And here’s the list.

This is the laundry list.

This is your laundry list?

No, it’s a laundry list.

Oh, okay.

In some incredibly boring journal about laundry men, it’s called the Pressman’s Journal or something like that, because people who press pants are called Pressman.

It’s on my nightstand.

No, but he describes it this way.

It’s really interesting.

He’s talking about the carbon forms, and he says they have a surprising uniformity.

The laundry lists across the country, this is in the 1930s and 40s, are basically all the same.

Breaches, coats, coats, denim, collars, cuffs, drawers.

I love that.

Gloves, handkerchiefs, mattress covers, pillowcases, sheets, shirts, shirts under, meaning under shirts.

I love it.

Shirts, under.

Shirts, W-O-D.

I have no idea what that means.

Shirts, W-O-D.

Any idea?

I have no idea.

Without, I’m not sure.

I don’t know either.

Without a dickie.

Maybe that’s it.

You remember the dickie?

That was mine.

That was always in the comic, the farcical black and white comic movies.

That was the thing that was always rolling up on these guys’ chest.

Yeah.

Anyway, so it’s a long list of this stuff, and you check off the number that you’ve got, and they put your name on it, and it’s a literal laundry.

So it’s like a sushi menu.

Well, kind of, yeah.

You know, where you mark off the, I mean, it’s already pretty there.

But it is.

If it’s not your laundry, it’s really boring.

Yeah.

You want.

And I can imagine, too, if they’re making that list right in front of you, it’s going to take ages as well.

I can’t wait for my boss to get back from his vacation so I can explain this to him now.

Oh, that’s super.

Laura, thanks for talking with us.

Who knew?

Yeah, not at all.

Thanks for having me on the show.

Drop us online sometime.

Tell us what’s happening in Hamburg.

Will do.

Thanks, Laura.

All right, cheers.

Bye.

Bye.

So the opposite of a laundry list is a wish list, right?

Of course, yeah, yeah.

It’s got the things that you desire most in the world.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, a wish list.

Or maybe even a Christmas list.

Well, if you have questions on your wish list, call us 877-929-9673 or send a whole list of questions in email.