Mau It Down

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi.

How are you?

Doing well.

Who’s this?

Hi, this is Jonathan.

I’m calling from Santa Monica, California.

Hey, Jonathan.

Welcome.

Welcome.

How are you doing?

I’m doing great.

How are you doing today?

Doing well.

Are you out on the pier?

I wish.

Actually, at the office, I live in the valley, but I work in beautiful, sunny Santa Monica.

Okay.

All right.

Well, what’s on your mind?

One of the questions that I had was, which I had posted on your Facebook page, and it

Got quite a bit of action was the word mouth. Originally, I spelled it M-A-U, but I gave

In to the crowd, and it’s M-O-W, but spelled like Mo, but pronounced M-O-W, and the context

Where this word came into play, I’ve been using this word as if I didn’t really think

Of it as a slang word or a regional word, but I’ve been using it my whole life. It came

To play a couple months ago. I was at a board game conference, and we were eating dinner,

And there was a tournament that was going to start. So my friend says, oh, we have to hurry.

So I told her, go ahead, save my place. I’m going to mouth this down real quick,

And I’ll be right with you. And she looked at me like I had three heads.

So my curiosity on that was, you know, and I’m not one to just, I love to look things up and do

My homework on it. So I did some research on it. I found some things in the Urban Dictionary.

And one of the entries said it had exactly the definition that I know, which is to eat something

Down real quick with great fervor. And it said that it’s regionally from the Northeast. So I was

Curious about that. And I had people replying from all over the country using that word. Some people

Said it was only used by younger people under 30. And not to give away my age, but I’ve been using

This since the 80s.

But you’re not from California, right?

I’m not originally from California. I grew up in

Long Island, New York. Yeah, we heard that.

You can hear the accent.

A little bit, yeah.

So that’s really, I don’t have

This. I don’t have Mao. Now I might

Say, I might understand you say I want to mow

This food down, meaning eat it really fast like

A mower would take down grass.

But I, no, Mao. It reminds me

Of housing. I’m going to house this

Hamburger. I mean, I have Hay Mao, which is a place

Where you store hay in the barn, but I don’t

Huh.

You don’t think it’s just onomatopoetic?

Mau, mau, mau, mau.

Maybe.

Like, nom, nom, nom, nom.

That’s not that.

That’s not that.

I mean, I’ve also thought of maw, you know, being a giant.

Yeah.

But, you know, and some of the people had replied back using the word scarf,

And I’ve heard of scarfing down.

Usually it’s mau as in mow down.

I’d never say I’d mow this word, but I’d say,

You know, let me mow this down real quick.

It would be the way I would use it.

I saw that discussion on the Facebook group,

And what’s really interesting to me is I’m pretty sure that everyone who spells it M-O-W, they wouldn’t mouth the grass in the yard, but they would mouth food, right?

Right.

Exactly.

So they have these two pronunciations for the same spelling.

Well, English is famous for that.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah, English is a mess.

We’re here to sort it out.

Jonathan, I’ve got to say, I think somebody just tossed this out for responses to the listeners and to see who has mouth.

Like you would mouth some food, I mean, to eat really fast.

And who doesn’t? Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or email us about it, words@waywordradio.org.

Try us on Twitter, W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

We’ll see what kind of response we get. We’ll just elaborate on that conversation from the Facebook group, all right?

Oh, yeah. So let me ask you, what word would you use for that same situation?

Chow. I mean, I think this came up in the discussion. I would chow down, just meaning to really just put my head down and just shoveling it in, like getting cold to a fire.

Eat noisily and things sort of flying.

I might scarf food.

Chow down.

This scarf.

Shovel it in, right?

Shovel it in.

But we’ll see what other listeners say and follow up on it.

Thanks for your call.

Really appreciate it.

See you on the Facebook group.

Thank you so much.

You have a wonderful day.

I love your show.

I’d love to keep hearing it.

Thanks a lot.

I’ll get more supporters.

Bye-bye.

Bon appetit.

So let’s do this for Jonathan.

Do you say mow down if you mean to eat a lot of food really fast?

Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or email words@waywordradio.org.