Hey, That’s Mine! (minicast)

Welcome to another mini-podcast of A Way with Words.

I’m Martha Barnette.

My co-host Grant Barrett is off trying to remember the kind of September when he was a young and callow fellow, like a couple of weeks ago maybe.

Anyway, speaking of remembering, remember when you were growing up and you wanted to lay claim to something, say maybe the biggest piece of chocolate cake on the plate or your favorite seat in the family car? What did you say to claim that item? Well, one of you called us about that recently.

Hello, this is Randy in Albuquerque.

Hi, Randy. What’s up?

Hi, Randy. What’s going on?

I have a question about some common slang, I think, probably. My wife is from the Cincinnati area originally, and I’m from the southwest, and we often see words that we interpret differently or hear new words, and one that came up was the word finny to indicate dibs. If you would say, I had dibs on the last piece of cake or whatever, they said, I finnyed the last piece of cake, which means it’s mine. And we wondered specifically whether this was a Germanic origin, because there’s a lot of German people in Cincinnati, of course, and my wife’s family of that stock.

Right, very much so.

It’s a good theory, but the evidence shows that it’s probably just related to a very archaic form of English that we just don’t really use anymore.

And it turns out that Finn is a way of claiming dibs in marbles when you play the kids’ game of marbles. And there’s all this weird childhood jargon about it.

And Peter and Iona Opie, have you ever heard of them?

No.

They are children’s folklorists, and they wrote about this. They wrote about all the different things that children say in their language. They’re British children’s folklorists, mind you. And they’ve talked about this as well.

And they mentioned that J.R.R. Tolkien, who wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, which everyone at this point now knows, he did a little bit of digging. And his theory was that fen, used to claim dibs, comes from defend, meaning forbid, which is an older use of defend that we really don’t have in English anymore, but existed at one point in English and came from French, possibly from defense.

So it’s just an abbreviated form of that, which I think is very interesting, that we should have this word that goes back, what, 1843. So it’s not just American. It’s not just from Ohio. It’s British. And I think it’s pretty interesting.

So, Randy, what did you say when you were growing up?

Dibs. We called dibs on something.

Yeah, I think it’s interesting, too, that this is a word that often gets brought up in arcane discussions of regionalisms because there’s also hosie. Have you heard that one?

No, not until I started searching on the web for Finney. I came across hosie, which I’ve never heard before.

Yeah, I think that’s in the Northeast. I hosie that seat.

I’ve never heard that before I started digging on this myself.

Now, did you ever freeze your seat?

When I was a boy in the 70s, we always froze our seat.

No, it meant that nobody else could take your place.

You were standing out in the cold in Missouri?

No, no. If you were sitting in front of the television, you had to get up to go get a drink or go to the bathroom. You’d say, I freeze my seat. And, you know, in that childhood, people respect these rules that seem arbitrary, but nobody would take your seat and you’d come back and there it would be.

You didn’t do that one?

No, I only recall dibs, and that’s about it.

Well, you know what they use in Singapore? Choping. C-H-O-P-I-N-G. Chopping is when you leave a little napkin or some little thing on your chair or your table so that nobody else will sit there.

Chopping?

Yeah, like you go to the movie theater and you want to save your good seats, but you also want to go to the counter and get some popcorn. Put your coat there. That’s called chopping.

Oh.

That weird kind of Singaporean English that they speak.

Yeah, no, I didn’t know that about Singapore. Did you, Randy?

No, not at all.

I’m sorry. I have a thousand and one useless facts, Randy.

Well, those sound like good rules.

Yeah.

Randy, I hope I’ve helped you.

Thank you very much.

All right.

All right.

Goodbye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, I’m glad we got that straightened out. And if you have another question for us, we’d love to hear from you. The number is 1-877-929-9673. Or you can email us at words@waywordradio.org.

And if you just can’t wait to chat with fellow word lovers, you can stop by the A Way with Words discussion forum. Our address is waywordradio.org.

Wishing you a good week and good words.

I’m Martha Barnette.

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Thank you.