Leaning Toward Fishers or Leaning Toward Sawyers

Hi there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Veronica and I’m calling from South Carolina.

What’s on your mind?

So, my mom always said something and I know what it means, I just don’t know what part of it means.

So if something, if you were hanging something on a wall or building something or whatever and it was just a little crooked, she’d say, well, that’s leaning towards fissures.

So I know what it means, it means whatever it is is crooked.

And I’ve looked up, tried to find it for several years, and there’s other stuff that refer to it.

They say leaning towards Sawyers, and I get that.

That’s about loggers and cutting trees and whatever, and if trees lean in, or leaning toward Jesus, I guess carpenters say, but I don’t know where Fishers is or what it’s about.

Like, why Fishers?

All right.

So if you’re hanging a picture and it was crooked, your mom would say it’s leaning toward Fishers, right?

Sure.

Or if you built something that wasn’t plumb, you know, something was like a little sideways or not quite plumb or level.

Yeah, leaning towards fissures, leaning towards sawyers, leaning towards Jesus.

Now, all of these are connected.

You’ve got all of the pieces here, and I’m going to hook them up for you.

Here’s the thing.

The logging use of this is probably the original use.

Okay.

What happens is when you’ve got people using a crosscut saw and they’re pulling back and forth, if that saw gets in a bind, that is, the tree is so heavy that it stops the saw from being able to move, right?

The tree isn’t leaning towards the fall.

Instead, it’s leaning towards the saw.

They can’t move it.

So it’s leaning towards the sawyers.

A sawyer is a person who saws.

Is leaning the wrong way.

It’s crooked.

So it’s literally leaning towards the sawyers.

And so it sounds like a last name.

And the idea is that it was a misunderstood outside logging as a last name and replaced with other last names.

So you can find not only leaning towards Fishers, but leaning towards Jones and Coopers and Perkins and Schoonovers.

I’ve seen Perkins, I guess.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

And other ones.

Now, all of these ideas here can be modified to suit local circumstances.

So you can fit in the name of a prominent local business or family or property owner.

So no matter where you are, if you’ve got a local property owner whose name is Jones, you can joke that it’s leaning towards the Jones, right?

Okay.

Jones property or the Jones business.

Very cool.

Well, Veronica, thank you for bringing that question to us.

Yeah, it’s cool, right?

But I love that you came to this with so much information and we were able to get it.

So those pictures are straight.

We’ve got a perfect line.

That line is plum.

Thanks.

Appreciate the information.

All right.

Take care now.

You guys have a great day.

You too.

Bye-bye.

You too.

Bye-bye.

Martha, there’s a little tangent I want to take.

I mentioned about a saw being in a bind, and that is where we get in a bind.

Really?

Yeah, the expression in a bind comes from logging.

If a tree doesn’t fall away in the direction you attend, it will trap or bind the saw blade, making it difficult to continue.

Oh, wow.

And so a logger might have originally said it was caught in the bind or caught in a box.

But we get the idea of just being stuck and having no options from that expression of being in a bind.

So it’s kind of figuratively used in the rest of English from logging.

I had no idea.

We should do a whole show on logging language, you know, log jam and debacle and all those kinds of things.

By the way, there’s another term from logging that I like.

I wish we should also borrow into the rest of English.

It’s called a Samson pole.

This is a long pole that you use to push on the tree, to push it in the direction you want it to go.

Oh, really?

And it makes you strong like Samson in the Bible.

Oh, like Samson.

And it gives you a haircut.

Great.

Yeah, I need a Samson pole to push my life in the right direction.

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