A defective car is a lemon because the fruit’s tartness long suggested sourness and disappointment. Austin from Owensboro, Kentucky, heard a friend use the word for a troublesome minivan. The negative sense of lemon appears by the 1860s for a sourpuss, then for a foolish or disappointing person, and later for a disappointing thing. Its specific use for a bad automobile is recorded by at least the 1920s, often with a whiff of a dealer passing off a known clunker. German has a similar use of Zitrone. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Why a Defective Car Is Called a “Lemon””
Hi, you have A Way with Words.
Hey, this is Austin. I’m from Owensboro, Kentucky. How are you guys doing?
Doing well.
All right, all right.
How are things going in western Kentucky there?
Nice sunny day. Pretty relaxing, really, right now.
Okay.
What can we help with?
My friend, he bought him a car, and I was asking him how his car is and everything, and he told me, he goes, well, Bob, I think I bought a lemon.
And he kind of threw me off when he was referring his car to a lemon there, so I was kind of hoping you guys could tell me where that had come from and exactly about it there on that question.
Boston, what kind of car was it?
It was just a van. He bought him a little minivan.
So he bought a minivan, and it’s not operating like he wants it to.
Right. He called it a lemon.
There’s an old meaning of lemon from the 1860s that meant a sourpuss or somebody who was of a bad disposition.
And that’s the first use that we can find in the etymological world of language meaning something negative.
And it’s not long after that lemon starts to be used repeatedly to refer to a person who is foolish or disappointing.
Right after that, it starts to be used for something that is a disappointment, such as a machine that is broke or a promise that was broken or something that doesn’t go or operate as intended.
And it’s not long after that when that narrows down a little bit and we find lemon being specifically used for an automobile that doesn’t run as it’s supposed to.
And so it’s this really nice progression that we can see in the written record over the decades of it moving just to referring to a sourpuss, to somebody who’s foolish, to a foolish decision, to a disappointing event, to something that’s broken, to a car that doesn’t operate like it’s supposed to.
Oh, that’s awesome. How far back to say that word?
Well, the sourpuss meaning of it goes back to the 1860s.
Okay. Wow. That’s pretty neat, guys.
Yeah, and there’s the same idea in German, too.
Zitrone means a lemon, and they use that to refer to a car that, you know, leaves a bitter taste in your mouth, basically, which sounds like is what happened to your friend.
Yeah, right, yeah.
And the automobile use of it goes back to at least the 1920s, probably older.
That’s awesome, guys. Really appreciate it.
But it often refers to, it’s funny, in the written record, lemon is often kind of a scam by the car dealer, where the unsuspecting customer buys a car that is broken and the dealer knows that it’s broken but doesn’t tell them.
Whereas I know that in modern usage, we often say a lemon is just a car that doesn’t run well, or a car that habitually doesn’t run well, like it continues to have problems.
So, Austin, what do you think your friend’s going to do?
I guess you’re just going to drive it until it falls apart.
I don’t know.
Well, I’m sorry to hear that.
Please send our sympathies to him.
All right.
Thank you very much.
Appreciate it.
Oh, thank you.
It was awesome.
Take care.
Bye, Austin.
See you.
Give us a call about anything related to language or slang or jargon or where a thing comes from or why you say it or what you think other people should say, 877-929-9673, or tell us all about it in an email to words@waywordradio.org.
