A San Antonio, Texas, listener recalls that when she was a youngster, she’d pester her mother by asking the name of lots and lots of rocks on the ground. Her mother eventually began referring to those specimens as leaverites — as in “leave ’er right there.” The term is popular among geology enthusiasts. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Leaverite”
We heard from Kelly Hallmark, who lives in San Antonio, Texas, and she writes,
My mother has always been very into geology. She never pursued a degree in it, but is incredibly knowledgeable. As a kid, we traveled in a trailer all across the western U.S., visiting and revisiting parks. Being far more inquisitive than anyone can tolerate, I had to stop and ask her about every single rock.
Eventually, she started calling them all leverites, as in, lever right there. And Kelly wondered if this was just her mother’s term, but it’s not. It’s a thing. This is geologist slang for a specimen that isn’t worth picking up, or the kind of rock that you might collect early in your career, but then toward the middle of your career, you’ve seen plenty. You’ve got enough of those. You leave her right there. Leave her right there.
But when I was first reading that email, I thought, oh, leave her right. That’s a type of mineral that I don’t know about. I love it. It reminds me of, we’ve talked about this on the show, unobtainium. Unobtainium. It’s a substance you want but can’t get. Unobtainium.
We love getting your emails, and sometimes we read them on the air. So send them to words@waywordradio.org or call us with a language question, 877-929-9673.
