Tim from Manhattan Beach, California, says his grandmother used to carry a brown paper bag and call it her poke sack. The word poke, in this case, means bag, making poke sack a pleonasm, which is an expression using more words than necessary to convey its meaning. This type of poke comes from French and is related to the words pouch and pocket. To buy a pig in a poke is to purchase something without carefully inspecting it. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Poke Sack”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Yeah, this is Tim Cross from Manhattan Beach, California.
Hi, Tim. Welcome to the show.
What can we do for you, Tim?
Thank you very much.
My grandmother’s passed away a long time ago. I’m an older guy. But when I would visit her as a child, whenever we would go out into the neighborhood or shopping, she would always have a brown paper sack. And she would hold it as if you were holding the balloon upside down with a big round part on the bottom and a little knot at the top. And every time she put something in there, she said she would always say something like, “I’m putting something in my poke sack.” And I believe she pronounced or spelled a P-O-K-E. And it’s driven me crazy because she never knew why she said that. And because she was from northeast Arkansas, I thought maybe it was a regional thing because I’ve never heard it anywhere else. And I wondered if you’d ever run across that before.
Oh, sure. A poke sack, huh?
-huh.
People sometimes use the word just poke to mean a bag or a sack, and it’s usually a little one. It’s something that you might carry a small quantity of groceries in, and sometimes you do carry it, as you described, like an upside-down balloon, and you’ve kind of got your fist around the top of it, right?
Oh.
Yeah, and poke is a very, very old word. It goes back centuries, back to the early 13th century. It’s related to words like pocket and pouch. And it comes to us from French, right?
Mm—
It comes to us from French. Poche, P-O-C-H-E.
Mm—
And so poke sack is a real interesting combination because both poke and sack mean the same thing. And so it’s, here’s a word for you, Tim. It’s a pleonasme. A pleonasme is a word that is redundant inside itself.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Sort of like tuna fish, huh?
A little bit, like tuna fish.
Yeah, kind of like that. Yeah, and some people say poke bag, but a lot of people just say poke. And you see that fossilized in English in the expression pig in a poke. Have you heard that one?
Buying a pig in a poke.
I never knew what that was either.
Yeah, exactly. If you’re buying a pig in a poke, then you’re buying a pig in a sack, and you’re not getting to inspect it beforehand. So it’s a metaphor, of course. It’s not really a pig in a bag.
Yeah, it’s an old scam, though. An old scam was they’d sell you a cat or a dog in a bag instead of a pig, and so the bag would be sealed, and if you bought it without looking, then you were making a mistake.
Yeah, but that’s the same poke. Strangely enough, that’s put 70 years’ worth of inquiry to rest, finally.
How about that?
Yeah, and you said that she was from Arkansas, which fits—
Northeast Arkansas, yeah.
Which fits with what we know about—
Yeah, it was like Fayetteville, Rogers, whatever. My father’s people and my mother’s people actually are from southeast Missouri, so she probably speaks a lot like my family does.
Yeah, that would be like in Joplin?
No, southeast would be the Bootheel and so forth. Bootheel of Missouri over there. You know that area?
Yeah.
Well, we’re glad to help. Now, I’ve listened to you guys for a number of years, and I think you guys do a great job, and you’ve filled me in on a bunch of stuff that I didn’t know that I’ve always said. If I live long enough, I’ll get the answers to everything.
Well, here’s to many more decades.
Thanks for calling, Tim.
Yeah, call us year after year.
Okay.
All right.
Take care.
All righty.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
