Palaver

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Greg Sunborn. I’m calling from San Antonio, Texas.

Hi, Greg. Welcome to the show. How can we help you?

Well, I’ve been, you know, bothered for decades over the word palaver.

P-A-L-A-V-E-R.

I mean, I’ve never heard it in any conversation.

And the only reason I remember it is because as a child, I was reading comic books constantly.

Particularly Western, like Rawhide Kid and Tales of the West.

And there was always, you know, a conversation where they would end by saying, like, enough of this palavering.

And I’ve never seen it used in any other context.

And I know it means, like, speaking or conversation, things like that.

-huh. So it means talk, and sometimes it has a sort of a negative sense or sort of a sarcastic sense.

To mean wasteful talk or excessive talk or even argumentative talk.

Okay.

But it’s kind of interesting.

Well, I don’t get the gist of that, but it was usually two guys kind of getting ready to draw on each other with a gun.

-huh. Interesting.

That’ll be enough of the palaver. You’re going to fire that gun or something else, Mr. Smith.

Very similar to your description there.

It’s usually someone who got shot or they got beat up.

There’s an interesting story behind Palavra and how it showed up in English.

Back in the 1700s when Portuguese was still a force on the high seas and still a big trading enterprise,

I mean, these were sailors that would travel around the world trading goods and slaves, unfortunately,

but spices and raw materials.

They set up outposts in West Africa.

And as often happened in these trading towns where lots of different cultures would meet,

they developed a kind of patois or even a pigeon where all these different languages contributed to this pretty much a language only spoken on the docks.

It’s just what you needed to know in order to do business, to trade goods, to understand money.

So in Portuguese, there is a word, palavra, P-A-L-A-V-R-A.

And it’s the same as the Spanish word palavra.

It means word.

Now, it means word in multiple senses of word.

For example, if I were to say, Greg, I need to have a word with you.

I don’t mean I’m just going to say horse.

I’m actually going to have a conversation with you.

I’m going to say more than a word.

So to have a word with somebody can mean to talk or have a discussion.

And so you’ll find it showing up in the early 1700s in these discussions of these trading towns in West Africa.

And what happened then when the English sailors went there to trade their goods and to do their business,

they picked up some of the seaside language used in the docks and brought it back.

And it showed up in English and it was borrowed in in this way.

It’s really interesting.

Now, how it got marked as being rural and Western in old movies, I have no idea.

By marked, I mean somehow we think of it as belonging to these crusty old dudes

and cowboy hats and dusty boots.

I don’t understand how it made it from there to there.

That’s exactly what it was.

Yeah, I don’t understand how it made it from there to there.

Well, how do you pronounce it? Is it palaver?

I’ve heard palaver and palaver both.

Yeah, I say palaver.

And also, even in West Africa today, they have what they call palaver huts,

which are these round huts where people will get together,

and if they have a problem, they just sit there and palaver until it’s over.

Yeah.

And so there’s multiple meanings.

One of the older meanings, which is no longer extant in English,

is to have a kind of legal discussion where you debate the merits of a claim,

almost like a judicial hearing.

So I could see cowboys using it.

Like a mining claim?

No, I mean a claim where she promised to sell me 20 barrels of molasses,

but I only got 15 for the money I gave her, something like that.

You go to a higher authority and try to get somebody to work it out.

I didn’t know any of that information from what limited searching I’ve done.

Well, Greg, we’re glad to help you.

Thank you so much for calling, all right?

Well, I appreciate it.

Thank you very much for the information, and y’all take care.

You too now.

Okay, you too, Greg.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Thanks again.

Bye-bye.

Bye now.

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