A listener in Honolulu, Hawaii, wonders about an expression used by her husband’s grandmother, who was from eastern Kentucky: “He left so fast, that you could have played marbles on his coattails.” The notion that a person is running so fast his coattails are stretched out perfectly flat goes back at least to the 1850’s. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Play Marbles on Coattails”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello there. This is Fawn calling from Honolulu, Hawaii.
Oh.
Hi, Fawn. Welcome to the show.
Thank you. So I have an expression from my husband’s grandmother, Jessie.
So Jessie, she was originally from Hazard, Kentucky.
My husband said that she had a lot of very interesting expressions.
And this expression, and she used to use it to describe people living very fast.
And she would say, oh, he just laughed so fast that he could have put marbles on his coattails.
And my husband and I love this expression very, very much.
We think it creates a very vivid image.
So I just want to learn anything and everything about it.
Boy, that’s fascinating.
I mean, Hazard’s right there in Appalachia, in eastern Kentucky.
That’s a good color there, right?
Yeah, very colorful, colorful expression.
It reminds me of when I was a kid growing up in another part of Kentucky.
We would talk about how if you could sprinkle salt on a bird’s tail, you could catch it.
Oh, that’s funny.
Yeah.
In this case, though, Phan, we’re talking about, imagine somebody wearing a long coat that has coattails, flaps of fabric below the waist.
And if you run wearing one of those, they will fly out behind you in the breeze that you’re making with your speed.
Imagine a flag, for example, on a car doing the same thing.
It’s limp when you’re still, but it’s stiff and straight in the breeze.
And so that’s the joke, is that they’re running so fast, their coattails are horizontal, and it’s a flat surface perfect for playing marble.
And you can find references to coattails being flat like that because of somebody being fast as far back as the 1850s.
Wow.
And I don’t find the marbles so fast that you can play marbles until early 1900s.
But again, that’s 100 years of people using that expression.
Obviously not very common anymore because who has coattails outside of a fancy wedding?
Right.
And because, speaking of coattails, because it’s coattails, so she only used it to describe males.
So I wonder if there is some equivalent phrases, expressions to say females.
That’s a really good question.
I have only seen it referred to for men.
I don’t know.
I don’t know of a female one for that.
She’s going so fast that her, I don’t know.
Her scarf is, you could play marbles on her scarf?
I don’t know.
Good question.
Anyway, so that’s most of what we know here.
But it’s very tied to a time when coattails were common and marbles were common.
Kids don’t play marbles much anymore either.
Amy, thank you for your call, Fan.
Really happy to talk to you.
Thank you.
All right.
Take care.
All right.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
We know that your parents and grandparents use language that seems odd, archaic, or amusing to you.
We’d love to hear about it and share it with the world.
