Amelia in Traverse City, Michigan, says her grandfather used to pull her close and whisper There are no bones in ice cream. He has a point there, but where did the phrase come from? That phrase seems to have arisen as part of a goofy joke making the rounds in the United States during the 1930s. A variant, Because ice cream has no bones, or a similar phrase, was often offered as the nonsensical answer to an equally nonsensical riddle. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “No Bones in Ice Cream”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello.
Hi, who’s this?
This is Amelia Siders from Traverse City, Michigan.
Welcome, Amelia.
What’s up?
Well, I’m hoping that you can help me figure out the origin of a saying my grandfather would say to me when I was very little. He died in the late 70s, and I remember sitting, he would have us sit on his lap, and he’d lean over and say, you had to tell us secrets. And he’d whisper in our ears, there are no bones in ice cream. And it was something that was kind of a family joke and funny, but silly, but also a little disturbing and strange. And I never understood where he got that from.
My father thinks that it was something related to, he had been a saying around his time, but I thought, I didn’t know if there would be something you guys had ideas about.
There are no bones in ice cream?
Correct.
There are no bones in ice cream. And something tells me he did this with great drama.
He did. It was a very, it was like he had to come tell us. He’s like, I have to tell you a secret. Come here. And I actually repeated this with my little nieces when they were older. It’s kind of a family tradition because it was something we heard. But I never understood why it was really nice.
Tell us about your grandfather. Do you know when he was born?
He was born, I would say he had to be born in the early 1900s, probably 1903, 1902. He died in the 70s, and he was, I think, 76, 77 when he passed away.
Sounds about right. Grew up in the Midwest.
He was from the Midwest.
Okay. We know a little bit about this expression. It wasn’t his alone. It did have a little bit of cachet. There was a period in the 1920s and 30s where this expression was in vogue. The earliest that we know that it was in use was in the 1920s. 1925 exactly. It pops up in some college yearbooks and in newspapers as a bit of nonsensical filler, right along with expressions like snowballs don’t bounce and Mississippi has no husband. And if all the crossword fans were laid end to end, what difference would it make how far they would reach? So it was just kind of these non-joke jokes, just this humor without a punchline sort of stuff.
Now, some of those sources in the 1920s and 1925, they attribute these jokes, all of these, they come together as a bunch, to the Purple Cow. Now, the Purple Cow was a bunch of things. And one of them was a humor magazine at Williams College in Massachusetts that started in 1907. It was named after the poem by Gillette Burgess. You might remember this. I never saw a purple cow. I never hoped to see one. But I can tell you anyhow, I’d rather see than be one. So this little humor magazine at Williams College is credited by these sources as coming up with this.
Well, that would make sense, though, if it was just a bunch of, you know, a series of nonsensical phrases. He would have been young. He would have been a young man and he would have been picking up all kinds of slang and goofy language at the time that this was making the rounds in the late 20s and early 30s.
You know, there’s also a really stupid joke that was making the rounds around that time that goes something like, you’re driving down the road in your canoe and your tire falls off. How do you get the pancakes off your dog’s roof? And the answer is purple because ice cream doesn’t have any bones.
There you go. Well, I’m just very happy that it has nothing to do with actual bones in ice cream. So that is a good thing. It’s just nonsense.
By the way, it became so well-known as an expression. It shows up in a Clifford Oditz play, Awakened Sing, by 1933. And even as late as the 1970s, it’s in a bit of dialogue that Sylvester Stallone wrote for one of his lesser movies. I think it was 1979. So it’s still around. It still pops up occasionally, but it doesn’t have the cachet that it once did.
Well, good. At least I know now I can actually understand when I repeat this to others.
Yeah, it’s just nonsense. The snowballs don’t bounce.
Amelia, thanks so much for calling.
Thank you both very much.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
All right.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Email words@waywordradio.org.
