Pour the Cobs on

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Mark from Indianapolis.

Hi, Mark. Welcome to the show. What can we do for you?

Well, I’ve got a question about a phrase which I first heard many, many years ago. I ran high school cross-country, and this was back in the 70s. And my grandmother would yell when we were on the course. She’d say, it’s time to pour the cobs on, or it’s time for the cobs, which, you know, of course, we knew meant to run faster. But we never really thought about it much at the time. But this came to the head again not too long ago when we had a reunion. And one of my teammates was wearing the T-shirts we had made back up in the 70s that had, it’s time to pour the cobs on. So we had not, you know, I really hadn’t thought about it in a long time. And, of course, my grandmother’s passed away a long time ago. And we were kind of trying to come up with what that might have come from or what it might have meant. And frankly, sort of came up empty. We speculated, you know, maybe it has to do with, you know, you’re almost out of food, so all you have left to eat is cobs. But it didn’t really make any sense for us. And we thought, you know, maybe you could help us on it.

So you’re thinking cobs as in corn cobs, C-O-B-S.

That’s what we were thinking, yes.

Okay. Pour the cobs on, meaning give it a little extra juice, a little more energy?

I’m sure that was the context, yes.

Oh, boy, this is a good one. The first theory that leaps to my mind is, have you ever burned a corn cob, a dry one? They burn really great. They’re fantastic.

I can’t say that I have.

Yeah, throw them on a fire and you’ll get a nice, good, rich flame there. So that was one theory that, I don’t know, I’m guessing here. I’m holding something in reserve that I’ll tell you in a minute. But my first theory was that it had something to do with throwing cobs on, say, a train engine fire or, you know, on a fireplace or I don’t know.

Yeah, you’re down to the end of your meal and you just throw the cobs on.

Well, I wasn’t even thinking the meal. I was just thinking, like, I’ve burnt the coal. I’ve burnt the wood.

Oh, I see. Nothing left but to throw the cobs on, right?

Right.

Yeah. That makes sense. But the thing is, what I was holding in reserve, I will now reveal. There’s a fantastic work called the English Dialect Dictionary, and they have a huge entry. It’s like a page and a half of meanings of the word cob, C-O-B. And a couple of those are really interesting here. They refer to anything that’s kind of lumpy or something that might, you know, small stones. Actually, it’s related to the word cobble as in cobblestone. So small or hard. And one of those meanings is testicle. And so what I’m speculating here that perhaps it was a more genteel way of saying to give it a little more testicular fortitude and run a little faster.

Oh, goodness. I don’t like to think of my grandmother talking about this.

Well, that was my question. Was she that type of gal? Was she maybe a little bawdy or a little raunchy at times?

No, not at all.

Okay. In fact, I think what you said earlier starts to make sense because I know that her father worked for the railroad.

Okay, sure. So I wonder if maybe it does have something to do with, you know, putting something in a railroad engine.

It could be. And then the other thing I wanted to tell you from the English Dialect Dictionary, this is a six-volume work done in the late 1800s, early 1900s, kind of really doing a great job of summarizing the dialects of the United Kingdom. There is a verb called to cob. If you cob someone, it means you beat them at a contest or a race.

Oh.

Yeah. But all of you all have T-shirts with this on it.

Well, yes, we did back in the day because you always had training shirts. Mine is long since gone. But, yes, one of the guys could still squeeze into his high school shirt. It was quite amazing.

To pour the cob on.

Well, the nice thing about this show, Mark, is that we have listeners all across the country and the world for that matter. And if somebody else knows this expression, we’re going to hear from them, all right? And when we hear from them, we’ll let everyone else know, too.

Well, good. I’d like to know, and I think we at least have a couple leads here. Mark, thank you so much for calling.

Well, I appreciate your help. Thanks a lot.

Okay.

All right.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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