A Dallas man says his grandmother used to carry around washcloth a plastic bag in her purse. When he and his siblings would get their hands dirty, she’d say to them, “Show me your paddywackers,” and they’d hold out their hands to be wiped clean. He wonders if she made up the word paddywhacker. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Paddywhacker”
Hi, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Ryan Schoenberg calling from Dallas, Texas.
Hi, Ryan.
Hi, Ryan. How are you doing?
Great. I’m calling in in regards to a word my grandmother used to use.
The word that she used to use was paddywhacker. She used to carry around a funny thing in her purse, and that was a washcloth in a little plastic baggie. And with us kids, our hands would inevitably get dirty throughout the day. And she would often say, show me your paddywhackers. And we would then extend our hands. And she would take her washcloth and wipe them. And so I was just wondering, is there an origin for this word paddywhacker?
You know, I’ve heard it in use with regard to, like, paddywagon or something like that. But I never heard it used by my grandmother. And her background is what? She’s American?
She was born in the U.S. She’s of Irish descent. She’s from where? Is she from Texas as well?
She’s from Texas as well. She was born and raised in Houston, Texas.
Okay, okay. You know, it’s not the most common use of the word paddywhacker, but there are some records and some dictionary entries that show that it has been used to mean hand by other people. And it’s kind of a complicated and convoluted story that I’m going to simplify for you.
You mentioned paddy wagon, and I think it’s related to paddy wagon. And just to clarify here, paddy is an offensive term for an Irishman. So paddy wagon meaning rounding up Irishmen who are in trouble?
Yeah, the wagon that you put to, yeah, exactly. You put the Irishmen who are causing fights and brawls and throw them into the wagon and take them down to the tank or the cooler for the night and let them out in the morning.
In any case, Hugh Rawson, in his Wicked Words, he talks about the way that the Irish word patty has been turned into other words. And he talks about the paddy wagon, but he also mentions that paddywhack was used to mean a stout Irishman or just any Irishman. And so what we’ve got here is a weird kind of occurrence of whack just suddenly appearing and kind of being attached to paddy.
And I think the theory here that holds the most water is that the Irishmen in the United States who tended to be cops were known for beating the suspects in front of them. And so if you got hit by one of these cops, it was a literal Patty whack. And again, it’s the one that holds the most water.
In any case, and he puts it this way, Hugh Rawson says it’s the kind of smacker whack an angry Patty might give you. But also, in British English, a paddywhack is used to mean a hit or a spank or a strike or even a rage. Or if you’re in a fierce passion, that is also a paddywhack. And it’s shortened often to paddy.
And we kind of come full circle here. And so what we’ve got is a conversion where people who didn’t quite know where paddywhack came from did what’s called a back formation. Do you know what a back formation is, Ryan?
No, I’ve never heard of that before.
That’s when we take a word and we look at it and we try to break it down into its component parts, but we kind of do it incorrectly. So people looked at paddywhack and said, that must mean that a paddywhack is a whack by a paddy. And since you hit with your hand, people assumed that paddy meant hand and not an Irish person.
So for what it’s worth, there you have it. The idea is it ultimately does go back to being patty and Irishman through this weird convoluted history of all these different forms of patty and pattywack and pattywacker.
When I’ve seen pattywack defined as a hand in reference works, it’s usually for little kids.
Yes, it is often for little kids.
Or a baby.
Yes. The reference works, however, they’ve oversimplified. If you look in the historical record, you’ll find plenty of uses of pattywack to mean a hand for any type of person.
Okay. Later, maybe it became used for children, but I think that you’ll find plenty of uses of it for adults.
Well, I hope that I haven’t confused matters too much, Ryan.
No, not at all. I appreciate it, and I’m glad to have maybe even some new ways to use the word as well.
Thanks so much for giving us a call.
Thank you.
Okay, bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
If you’ve got something Granny always said that you want to find out more about, we’re the people who can help, 1-877-929-9673. And if you want to submit your words of the decade or words of the year, send them to words@waywordradio.org.
