It’s common for Southern moms to promise their children a Yankee dime if they complete a chore. The thing is a Yankee dime is a motherly kiss — much less exciting than an actual dime. It’s a phrase that plays on Yankee thrift, and goes back to at least the 1840’s. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Promising a Yankee Dime”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello.
Hi, who’s this?
This is Charles calling from Dallas.
Hi, Charles. How are you doing?
I have a phrase that my mother used when I was about 12 years old. She told me she would give me a Yankee dime if I helped her, if I dried the dishes after she washed. And so I was, you know, didn’t get an allowance, so I was ready, you know, to help. And so after we got through with the dishes and I dried them and she reached over and kissed me on the cheek, and that was my Yankee dime. I’ve never heard anyone else use this term, but I felt really cheated. I wanted money.
Yeah.
You wanted some cool Civil War relic, right? Something shiny and silver.
Yeah, kisses from your mom, those are a dime a dozen, but…
Yeah.
Yeah, and Charles, where was she from?
She was from Louisiana.
Oh, yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah.
That’s pretty well established throughout the South, especially in Alabama, so I’m not surprised that Louisiana would also… But you’ll find it in the Carolinas and Texas and Arkansas and wherever else, too. But it’s always a perfunctory kiss. It’s a kiss in lieu of what’s a kiss when you expected something else.
Yeah.
When you expected passion, you just get like the dry lips. Or when you expected money, you just get a smooch. And yeah, it’s always a disappointment. It’s often a trick played on kids.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And the reference is, it’s partly to the whole notion of Yankee thrift. You know, those New Englanders are kind of known for being, well, a Southerner might say stingy.
Tight-fisted.
Yeah, tight-fisted. And it goes back. It’s very well documented back as far as the 1840s or so.
Okay.
I guess I thought it might have been something that came out of the Civil War as being cheated by a Yankee. That’s what I thought.
Well, I think it’s got some of that flavor, but it definitely goes back at least to the 1840s, well before the Civil War.
Hey, do you know what Yankee cotton is?
No.
Snow. That’s another term in the South. Yankee cotton is snow or Yankee rain.
All right.
Thanks, Charles, for your call. Really appreciate it.
Oh, thank you so much. I love your show. Take care.
Oh, thank you so much. Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
A Yankee dime. There’s also Dutch nickel or Dutch quarter, which is a hug. And then a Quaker Fip, which is really interesting. Fip being a shortened form of a much older word for a coin worth about six cents that we no longer have. But a Quaker Fip was a kiss.
Right.
Right. So something from somebody else, a different group, right?
Yeah.
We’re always making fun of the other groups, aren’t we?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yankee dime. 877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org. Find us on Twitter under the handle Wayword, W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.
