Put Some Mustard On It

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Gary.

I’m from Wiley, Texas, which is near Dallas.

Okay.

Wiley.

Welcome to the show.

What’s up?

Well, thank you.

So a few weeks ago, I was playing golf with a buddy, and we were driving up to the green.

And I said, there’s your ball in front of the green.

He said, no, it can’t be my ball.

I put too much mustard on it.

It has to be behind the green somewhere.

And then he looked at me and said, where does that come from anyway?

And I don’t know, but I say it too.

And it was interesting because he was raised in Colorado and I was raised in West Texas.

So it’s something that we both say, but we don’t know where it comes from.

Interesting there.

So mustard.

So you’re meaning that it went really far?

Yes, yes.

And so we both played Little League baseball, and we both remember our coaches when they were telling us to throw the ball harder.

They would say, hey, put some mustard on it.

So, yeah, put a little more energy into it, basically.

This is good.

Yeah, we can do something with this.

There is a mustard dating back to the early 1900s, a slangy term meaning, as it’s defined in the Historical Dictionary of American Slang, keen spirit in opposition or courage.

Or just kind of generally used for vim or vigor or force or just like, you know, you’ve got a lot of mustard in your son.

Go get him, that sort of thing.

But then by the 1970s, it’s transformed fully into baseball, and it means basically just the force on the ball.

There is a really interesting little note, though.

In 1907, there was a thesis about baseball language that was published, and they used the longer expression, all to the mustard, meaning good condition.

So you might say, he’s all to the mustard.

He’s ready to go.

Put him in coach, that sort of thing.

So we have a lot of different mustards.

But they all go back to mustard being the spicy condiment.

And not this puny, bland stuff that’s artificially yellow today, but the real spicy stuff, the stuff that will make you wave your hand in front of your mouth because you’re on fire.

Okay.

Well, that’s great.

Thanks.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Bye, Gary.

You too.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

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