Orey-Eyed

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Ann.

Hi, Ann. How are you?

Hello, Ann.

I’m well. Thank you so much.

And where are you being well?

Well, right now I’m in a park in Nashville, Tennessee, but I really live in Saugatuck, Michigan.

There is a word that’s been in my family for at least two generations.

And I found out when I was walking and talking with a friend that it’s actually not a real word, which just devastated everybody in my family.

Wait, how do you use a word that’s not a real word?

Well, okay, I’ll tell you the word. It’s ory-eyed.

Ory-eyed.

And it means really angry, like far angrier than normal.

And, you know, I’m one of six girls, and it was a word that was used quite a bit in my house.

From Michigan?

Actually, we’re from Chicago, but I’ve lived in Michigan a long time.

Okay.

Yeah, and it came from my grandmother, my dad’s mom, who was very proper, you know, daughter of the Mayflower. She would never swear, but she would get Ori-eyed occasionally.

Interesting.

And what’s the evidence that it’s not a word?

Well, okay, so I was walking with a new friend at the time who’s very erudite, and I said, I used the word, and she didn’t know it.

And I thought, well, this is really neat because I actually know something she doesn’t.

And then she said, that’s not a word.

And I said, yes, of course it is.

And she said, no, it’s not.

So I went home, and it wasn’t in the dictionary.

So then I talked to all my sisters, and no one could believe it wasn’t real.

And actually, one of my sisters found it in a dictionary of slang.

-huh.

So then you all were ory-eyed about this friend of yours.

Yes.

I said, it’s real.

Well, I don’t know.

Is slang real?

I don’t know.

Oh, yes.

Of course it is.

Absolutely.

Yes, indeed.

And there’s three things happening here that we just want to put these to rest really quickly.

Your friend.

Okay.

Doesn’t know everything about the English language.

Okay, I’m going to tell her that.

One person’s opinion is not enough evidence to say that a word isn’t a word, which I know that sounds contradictory, but that’s basically what she’s saying.

The second thing is, if you’ve been using this word in your family for three generations, it is, by God, that’s a word.

It’s totally a word.

You can say it, you can spell it, it has meaning.

But what it meant in the slang dictionary was like a sailor’s term for drunk.

Okay, here we go.

And you weren’t even using it the way it was originally, you know, used.

English, that wacky beast, has so many meanings.

Each word has so many meanings.

It’s crazy.

Here’s what happened to this word, and it has undergone some transformations.

We first see it show up, oh, I don’t know, say 1700s or so in Scots.

Scottish English, okay?

And at that time, it doesn’t mean angry, and it doesn’t mean drunk.

It means dismal or sad or melancholy.

Imagine somebody with a droopy face and a kind of like a sagging demeanor.

That’s being ori, O-O-R-I-E, I think is the preferred spelling.

So it meant sad.

Sad, yeah.

And then we see a transformation where it becomes a little more about looking weak or sick or drooping.

And then we see it sometimes meaning to have a chill or to just plain out to be cold, the ori cattle in the pasture, right?

Oh, wow.

But then you start to think, well, some people, you could describe somebody as looking ory, who is none of those things.

They’re not melancholy.

They’re not sad.

They’re not cold.

But they have that look.

And what would give them that look?

Well, being drunk or being beside themselves with anger, right, would give them that same kind of like something happening with the eyes and the posture and the demeanor where they are not themselves.

They’re clearly something other than normal.

Right.

And so we see the slow transformation of this word over time as it starts to mean this variety of things.

So in other words, lots and lots and lots of people have used it over history.

Oh, that makes me feel so good.

I mean, tons of use.

And it shows up.

When you talk about consulting the dictionary, there’s no such thing as the dictionary.

There are many dictionaries.

It shows up in the Century Dictionary.

It shows up in the Oxford English Dictionary.

It shows up in the Dictionary of American Regional English.

It shows up in the Scottish National Dictionary.

It shows up in the Dictionary of the Scots Tongue.

It shows up again and again and again.

Well, it’s a Scottish word in origin.

Originally Scots, borrowed firmly into English dialects.

Oh, so interesting.

This is like a victory for me.

This is great.

Well, I’m glad to equip you with all the munitions you need to go out and assail your friends.

Well, I never stopped using it, and so now I can use it with great confidence.

Indeed.

It sounds like you’re not lacking in that front, I’ve got to tell you.

Anne, you sound like a woman who knows what she wants from life.

Yes, this is true.

This is very true.

All right.

Well, Anne, we appreciate your calling.

Yeah, and if you’ve got anything else from your family of six sisters or your grandma, give us a call sometime, all right?

Okay.

Thank you so much.

This has been a pleasure.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

We’d love to hear your conversations about language.

Give us a call 877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.