Off Like a Jug Handle

Hi there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, good morning, Martha.

Hello, who’s this and where are you?

Hi, my name’s Cody Winchester and I’m calling from Honolulu, Hawaii.

Oh, welcome.

Well, I’m calling today about a phrase that’s been in my family for a long time.

So growing up, my family’s favorite thing to do is to go for drives.

We would go on big family vacations across the country.

And on the weekends, we would just jump into the car and go for a Sunday road trip.

And whenever we would get the car loaded up and everything was ready to go and we were buckled in and leaving the driveway, my dad would always shout out, we’re off like a jug handle.

And I had no idea what this ever meant.

He had always said this.

I’ve heard him say it a hundred times.

And finally one day I asked him, I said, what does it mean to be off like a jug handle?

And he just smiled and said that he had no idea, and it was something that his great-grandfather had used to always say.

And he never knew what it meant himself.

Oh, wow.

So I wonder if you can help me out with that today.

We sure can.

We can absolutely help you out with that.

Where did you look when you looked for answers?

You know, I’ve just done a quick search on the Internet, but I haven’t come up with a whole lot.

The reason I ask is because if you look in slang and dialect dictionaries, pretty much all of them have an entry for jug handle or jug handled.

And a lot of them talk about things that look like a jug handle.

They’re like people with big ears are said to be jug handled or you might say somebody in politics for a long time to say someone was jug handled mean that they were very partisan because a jug handle we’re talking about think of a liquor jug with this one big kind of handle on the side that you hold not two not like mickey mouse ears but a single one so if somebody was all to one side it meant they were completely partisan for whatever party they were in favor of like very much a wig or very much a democrat or what have you right so all to one side jug handled.

But the interesting thing is none of the dictionaries that I have, and I have a lot of them, seem to really, in my opinion, do the justice to the term off like a jug handle, which is a little different, but it’s still about the shape of the jug handle.

The shape of a juggle handle is what? A U, right? Right.

It’s a U shape.

And so the idea of off like a jug handle is you’re doing a U-turn and heading out.

You’re in a place, you’re looping back around, you’re turning around and heading out the exit.

And the reason I think that this is the origin of it, it’s the shape of it, is in the earliest uses that I can find in old newspapers in the 1860s and later, you’ll find people in difficult situations where they want something from somebody and they’re not going to get it.

And they’re like, well, I’m off like a jug handle and they take off and they go out.

And so it’s just about turning around and heading out.

So your father’s use wasn’t true necessarily to the early uses, but it still means heading out, right?

Oh, that’s great.

Yeah, it’s basic.

That’s a fun use.

You know, I’ve been wanting to know for a long time.

The earliest use that I know in print is interesting, and I want to share this with you.

This is by the guy who took the pen name Artemis Ward.

Now, his real name was Charles Farrar Brown, and he was a famous humorist.

And what he did under the name of Artemis Ward was wrote these dialect pieces, written like a kind of semi-literate wise guy.

He just had a lot of country sense, a lot of horse sense, but not a lot of book learning.

So he’d intentionally misspell words.

And things like that.

And in 1860, he wrote this fictitious piece about going to visit the then president-elect Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, Illinois.

And so he has his character of Artemis Ward in the room with Lincoln saying, like, basically, if you won’t talk to me, then I’m off like a jug handle.

I mean, I’m going to head out. I’m taken off here.

And so I believe these Artemis Ward pieces were so common. Even in the UK, they were collected in the books. They were widely reprinted. They became things that he would do on stage in character as Artemis Ward.

I believe that even if he didn’t coin the phrase off like a jug handle, he is probably the one who popularized it.

Oh, that’s really fascinating. I wonder if my great-great-grandfather had ever read Artemis.

It’s possible. You can still occasionally find his collected works in used bookstores.

Great. I always imagined maybe it had something to do with the jug of filling up your car before you left the driveway or maybe making sure you brought a handle of moonshine with you for the road.

But that makes a lot more sense.

So thanks for doing the research for me.

That’s a nice connection, by the way, the handle of moonshine.

That is very much the kind of jug I’m thinking of, the old two-tone ceramic jug with the three X’s on the side and the cork stopper, you know, and the single handholds, you know, the single affordance there to grab it by.

Oh, that’s super.

Well, thank you so much.

Yeah, thanks for calling.

Our pleasure, Cody.

Thanks for calling.

Mahalo.

Take care.

Aloha.

And happy Father’s Day.

Bye-bye.

Take care, Cody.

Bye-bye.

You know, speaking of jug handles, I’m reminded of the Latin word testa, which means pot or jug.

And it’s the root of the French word tête, meaning a head.

I did not know that.

You know, you lose the S with the little circumflex in tête.

-huh.

Yeah, that’s right.

And that’s from Latin testa, meaning pot or jug, because you look like a jug.

Yeah, that’s right, with your ears sticking out.

Yeah.

And so French does have a lot of those words with the little hat over the vowel, which always indicates that etymologically there used to be an S after that vowel.

Exactly.

Like chateau.

Right.

Or est et et etre, to be ester.

Well, call us with your language question, 877-929-9673, or send us an email.

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