What’s man lettuce? A Tallahassee, Florida, listener uses that term for beard. If you have a beard you might be said said to be barbigerous. If you get it trimmed, you’ve had a pogonotomy. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Man Lettuce”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Tyler from Tallahassee, Florida.
How are you guys doing?
Excellent, Tyler.
Welcome to the show.
What can we do for you, Tyler?
So, yeah, I was just calling because I’ve been growing my current beard now for about two years.
And I’ve had facial hair since I was about 15 or 16, and I’m 28 now.
So it’s been quite a while.
And I’ve heard quite a few expressions about my beard.
Most of them are pretty cliche and involve lumberjacks or, you know, pitchers from baseball teams.
But a few days ago, I was getting a coffee at my local coffee shop, and the barista complimented me on my man lettuce.
He said, you have really nice man lettuce.
And, you know, I stopped for a second because I’ve never heard that one and never heard anything close to it.
So I was hoping you guys might be able to let me know where that comes from.
Man lettuce.
I’ve never heard man lettuce, but if you’re growing a magnificent beard, I could see how somebody might call it that.
My beard doesn’t look like a head of lettuce, but it looks like maybe a bunch of shredded lettuce put onto my face.
Okay.
Okay.
Yeah, give us a picture here.
What color is it?
So my beard, it’s got variation in color.
It’s a medium brown up to a light brown.
And, you know, I’d say from the mustache down straight down to my chin is lighter, and it gets darker as you get closer to my ears.
Okay.
Okay.
So this sounds pretty big.
But it’s not green.
Yeah, no, no, definitely not green.
But, yeah, yeah, pretty long.
I’ve been growing it for two years.
If I were wearing a tie, you wouldn’t be able to see the knot.
So I guess that can give you an idea.
Okay.
All right.
You know what?
I have never heard the term man lettuce.
Neither me.
No.
When I forget to shave my legs, maybe that’s Lady Parsley.
I don’t know.
So it sounds like you just were teased by something unique to this barista.
Yeah, a very creative one.
Yeah, yeah.
He said that he has heard it from his brother-in-law, has said it on a couple of occasions.
Okay.
That’s all I know about it.
Well, you’re in Florida.
Nobody’s compared it to Spanish moss?
No, but that would seem to make sense.
Yeah, not quite lettuce.
Have you guys heard that one before?
No.
No.
I just made that up.
You know, the only other thing I can tell you about beards, I mean, Grant has one, so maybe he can talk about beards.
I am barbigorous.
Barbigorous.
That’s nice.
I was going to say you’re pogonophorous.
Oh, nice.
Pogonophorous.
Yeah, yeah.
The Greek word for beard is pogon.
And so you see a lot of words.
If you start looking in the dictionary, you see pogonophobia, which is the fear of beards,
Or pogonophilia, which is, you know, loving beards,
Or pogonotomy is what you get when you go to the barber or trim your own beard.
You get a beard cutting.
I probably should have said barbidurous.
I believe it’s a joke.
Barbidurous.
Barbidurous, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That’s taking it in another direction there.
But yeah, so pogon is the Greek word for beard.
That’s interesting.
Yeah, yeah.
So there are lots of words related to that.
Well, Tyler, you’ve now shared man lettuce with the world.
That’s an opportunity for people to add that to their own vocabularies.
God help them.
We’ll see how it goes.
Take care now.
Thanks for calling.
All right.
All right.
Thank you.
Bye.
Bye-bye.
I’m sure you have a word for beard that we haven’t heard yet.
Let us know about it.
