Penny in Savannah, Georgia, recalls that her father, a Navy veteran who served in the South Pacific, would say of someone who was clueless or didn’t know what he was talking about: That person doesn’t know if he’s punched, bored, or drifted. There are lots of versions, particularly in the United Kingdom and Australia, all of them metaphorically referring to the action of woodworking tools on wood, which included such verbs as drilled, countersunk, reamed, and tapered. Other versions include bored, punched, drilled, or countersunk and punched, bored, or burnt out by lightning. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Punched, Bored, or Drifted”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, this is Penny Rossiter in Savannah, Georgia.
Hey, Penny, we’re glad to have you. What’s up?
Well, my father was a World War II veteran, and he was in the Navy and served in the South Pacific in the Battle of Guadalcanal.
And anybody who is in my age bracket and had a parent who served in that branch of the military probably knows that they had a lot of expressions and names for other people that seemed to be indicative of that era that they went through.
And my dad always used the term, if he talked about other people in a certain way or another person in a certain way, he would say, that person doesn’t know if he’s punched, bored, or drifted.
I never knew what that term meant. And as an adult, I’ve tried to Google that term and I get absolutely nothing.
But in my mind, in my older mind, I thought, well, it probably has to do with something he heard or learned in the Navy.
Penny, when you say that he talked about people in a certain way, what was that certain way?
Well, now that I look back on my childhood, it must have meant that the person he was talking about didn’t know what they were talking about, or they didn’t have enough experience to know what they were talking about.
Because it was almost, I don’t want to say in a derogatory fashion, but it wasn’t a compliment when he said that about somebody.
Let me phrase it that way.
And I’ve never been able to, I’ve never heard anybody else use that expression.
And I’ve never been able to find out what that expression meant or where it came from.
I would say for certain that your information about the Navy is important here.
But I’d also say that it is derogatory.
It is basically saying that somebody doesn’t know enough to come in out of the rain.
You know, there’s a lot of expressions like that.
It doesn’t know how to pour any liquid out of a boot, that sort of thing.
Right, right, right.
Which is the kind of thing I’d expect from a fellow, you know, from that era, from the Navy, too.
But there are a lot of variations of this.
It definitely has a connection to the Navy, especially in the U.K. and the Commonwealth countries like Australia.
And it can mean confused or foolish or idiotic or ill-informed, that sort of thing.
And it’s connected particularly to woodcraft, the making of things with wood, because all of the forms of the verbs that are used in this expression, bored, punched, drilled, countersunk, reamed, tapered, all of these are things that you can do to wood when you’re making a ship, when you’re putting it together or repairing it.
So one long form is he doesn’t know if his behind, his rear, his derriere, he doesn’t know if his derriere is bored, punched, drilled, or countersunk.
So a lot of times, though, I’m using derriere there when a much coarser word is sometimes used.
But you get the picture, I think.
Or punched, bored, or burnt out by lightning is one that I like.
So they’re bad things that happen to ships, it sounds like.
Well, they’re good things as well.
He doesn’t know what his circumstances are.
It’s not about bad things necessarily happen to ships.
It’s things that you might do on purpose.
Right.
Because if you countersink something, it’s when you put a nail or a screw into a piece of wood and it’s flush with the surface.
Right, right.
So, yeah, that’s what we know.
There’s another one that’s a little different, and you can say someone doesn’t know whether they’re Arthur, Martha, or Mabel.
I have that problem.
I’ve never heard that one before.
I run into that a lot.
Penny, I bet we hear from some other Navy veterans who have expressions like that.
Yeah.
I really hope so because that’s been a long time ago, World War II.
But thanks for doing the research on that and letting me know and figuring that out for me.
I really appreciate that.
Our pleasure.
Take care of yourself, Penny.
All right.
Take care.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
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