Pigeonhole

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Daryl from Seattle.

Well, hi, Daryl. Welcome to the program.

Thanks.

What can we do for you?

Well, I heard somebody talking about wanting to have different job responsibilities

Because they didn’t want to become pigeonholed.

And, well, I know what that means, but it just struck me as a weird-sounding phrase.

And I was wondering where in the world that comes from because pigeons don’t have holes in them and you wouldn’t put a pigeon in a hole.

So I thought I would call you.

So no theories of your own about this, huh?

Not really. It just seems so strange. I just couldn’t come up with anything.

What kind of desk do you sit at, Daryl?

Just a regular old cube.

Does it have any kinds of slots or drawers or slats or shelves or anything on top of it?

Oh, yeah.

I’ve got shelves and drawers.

Little cubbyhole kinds of things to put your Post-its and that kind of thing?

Do you have anything that’s open in the front about the size of a business envelope that you can put things in?

Not specifically that size.

You see where I’m headed, Martha, right?

I do.

And I have one more question for you.

Have you ever hung out with pigeons?

Well, no, but I see them on the edges of buildings.

Well, Daryl, here’s the answer.

People who raise pigeons put them in these compartments that are kind of like what Grant is describing,

You know, open in the front and little rows of little holes that the pigeons make their little nests in.

That word meaning a place where you keep pigeons has been around since the 16th century, I think.

And then things that were modeled after that, like when I was in high school for a couple of summers, I worked in a seminary post office, and we had what looked like pigeonholes.

It was a structure where you sorted all the mail.

It had all these little compartments, and you would just put the letters in there.

Well, it’s modeled after where people used to keep pigeons.

Wow.

So that’s where the classifying kind of meaning comes from then.

Yes.

That’s interesting.

So the people who raised domestic pigeons, they gave them little shelters that looked like the holes in cliffs that pigeons might otherwise live in, right?

Right. Well said.

And so those are shaped roughly like the shape of the boxes on the top of a desk.

I’m thinking my father has a desk like this.

It’s got, you know, a roll top kind of thing.

And on the sides are three or four stacked little shelves that are about a letter.

They’re as deep as a letter open in the front.

No lid or drawer or any kind of cupboard happening there.

And those are pigeonholes because they look the same.

That’s it.

Right.

And you use them for sorting.

And one thing goes in one place and one thing goes in the other place.

And so if you’re pigeonholed, you’re going to go into that one place and no place else.

Right.

You’ve got the hole for the bills to be paid and the bills paid and the bills never to pay, right?

Right.

And hopefully the bills will fly away like pigeons.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and they tend to crap on you like pigeons.

Yeah, I was going to say.

I was going to say.

Well, does that make sense?

Oh, that makes perfect sense.

It’s not so strange anymore.

Yay.

That’s what we’re here for.

Thank you for calling then, Daryl.

All right, thank you.

All right, bye-bye.

Bye-bye, take care.

Bye.

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