The Origin of “Tom Swifty”

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Recently on our show, our quiz guy, John Chaneski, gave us a little quiz involving Tom Swifties, those sentences that feature an adverb that’s used in a funny way, like, “Pass the shellfish,” Tom said, crabbly.

Or, “I got the drain unclogged by using a vacuum cleaner,” Tom said, succinctly.

But, you know, Grant, one question that we left unanswered in that episode was, why are those things called Tom Swifties in the first place?

Oh.

And it’s great.

It turns out that the name refers to a series of books for young readers, sort of like the old Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew series, that started in 1910.

And it featured this bright young scientist named Tom Swift who comes up with cool inventions and solves problems using his scientific knowledge, sort of your proto-MacGyver, you know.

Mm-mm—

And the author who wrote many of those original books, Edward Stratemeyer, had what you might call an inordinate fondness for adverbs.

I mean, he was one of those guys who just can’t write the word said and leave it alone.

It had to be “Tom said,” comma, good-naturedly, or “Tom said,” comma, hiring.

The hallmark of the great thinker but the bad writer.

Exactly.

And those books were so packed with adverbs, those Tom Swift books, that people started making fun of them and coming up with bad puns involving adverbs.

The classic one being, “We must hurry,” said Tom Swiftly.

Yes.

And so then there was sort of this cottage industry of Tom Swifties.

And the industry keeps cottaging.

It does. It does.

But I should say that like a lot of young men, I learned about Tom Swifties from Boys Life magazine.

This is the magazine of the Boy Scout Foundation of America.

Oh, no wonder I didn’t know about those.

I don’t know if it’s still there, but for years and years, they had a page of Tom Swifties.

I did not know that.

Cool.

What are some of your favorites?

There were a lot of people talking on the discussion forum.

Well, those are the ones that I wanted to share with you because a lot of creative minds who listen to the show have chipped in on our forum to make a long list of these things.

And this is one of my favorites.

“I got the first three wrong,” he said, forthrightly.

And this one requires that you see it, but I’m going to try it anyway.

“Tom murmured forensically,” and the mm is four ins in a row.

Oh, forensically.

Brilliant.

I should give the credit for those.

I’m sorry, I didn’t write it down here.

But Glenn, who is a heavy participant in our forum, he said this one.

“Charlatan, dissembler, mountebank, rogue,” decried Tom euphoniously.

Just words that are fun to say.

Euphoniously.

Euphony.

And then one more from Ron.

Ron said, “The prisoner is coming down the stairs,” Tom said condescendingly.

Oh, oh, nice.

For somebody who doesn’t care for puns, these just rock my world.

Yeah.

Because they’ve got the extra element in there.

Sometimes there’s a third and a fourth thing to catch, right?

It’s not just the one thing.

There’s layers here.

Yeah.

Well, I also like the ones that don’t have an adverb.

I don’t know if there’s a special word for this, but like, “I’m halfway up a mountain,” Tom alleged.

Very nice.

Or “There’s room for one more,” Tom admitted.

Or my favorite, “I’m wearing a ribbon around my arm,” Tom said with abandon.

With abandon.

Terrible stuff.

Give me more.

Awful.

Give us more.

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