Quixibar

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Michael Gorn calling from Madison, Wisconsin.

Hi, Michael.

Hello, Michael.

So I have a question regarding a word I’ve been using for maybe 20, 25 years that I’m just now realizing may not, in fact, be a word.

But the word is, and I’m not quite sure how to spell it, but I pronounce it Quixi Bar.

Quixi Bar.

Quixi Bar.

Yeah.

Do you buy that in a health food store or what?

I haven’t seen one yet, but I’m still looking.

How do you use it?

So if something’s confusing, befuddling, unexpected, and someone says, oh, this happened, I would reply with, well, that’s a quicksy bar.

And hence the puzzling look.

And then happens the puzzling look.

So it’s one of those words that kind of means what it is.

I guess so, yes.

Well, you know, I assume for the longest time I picked it up from family.

But, you know, I recently asked uncles, grandfathers, parents, etc.

And they all had no clue what I was talking about.

Oh, really?

I looked in like Yiddish dictionaries.

Obviously, without knowing how to spell it, it was kind of a wasted endeavor.

So I tried that because my grandfather speaks Yiddish.

But nothing.

And where’s your grandfather from?

From Philadelphia, but the family background is kind of a European-Russian-Polish mix.

This is quite a puzzle.

It’s a quicksy bar.

It’s a quicksy bar.

I’ve never heard of it, Michael.

I really don’t even know anything about this.

The spelling thing is a bit of a difficulty, but done a little bit of digging on this, and there’s nothing here.

We’ve had some communication with Michael Wex, who was an expert in Yiddish about this, and Michael suggested that it might be related to quicksilver.

Quicksilver in German is something like Quicksilver.

And it’s used kind of in German to mean if you have Quicksilver in your body that you have ants in your pants.

And it’s your fidgety or restless.

And I’m not saying that that is definitely the word that you’re talking about, but it’s the closest thing that we could think of.

There’s some discrepancy there.

Those meanings don’t really match.

But the phonetic similarity is there.

It’s a kind of superficial one.

Well, for what it’s worth, possibly German Quicksilver, I don’t know.

Okay.

If you’ve been using this word for 20 years, my question for you is, have other people picked it up?

Have you been able to get other people to use it?

Only once I realized it might not be a word, and then I started using it more.

And I’ve started to convert some people, I think.

And I’ve been hearing it a little bit more, and I think my plan now is to try and make it a word.

I think it has potential.

Quixi bar.

I mean, this is a complete and total Quixi bar.

It’s kind of fun to say.

It’s fun, yeah.

It’s got some nice sounds.

Right, Quixi bar.

Yeah.

Kind of why I think it stuck around for a little bit, but I don’t know.

So Quixi Bar is something that confuses you or befuddles you.

Yeah.

Okay.

Very good.

Very good.

Well, this has been a total Quixi Bar.

It has been a Quixi Bar, but the cool thing about this is that we can put the word out and see if anyone else has heard this word.

That’s right.

Crowdsourcing.

Crowdsourcing.

We’re going to source the crowd.

We’re going to find the crowd.

Crowd.

Listen, crowd.

The word is Quixi Bar.

Have you heard this?

If you have, drop us a line at words@waywordradio.org or give us a call at 1-877-929-9673.

Let us know where you heard it, how long you’ve been using it, and what you think it means.

Hey, thanks, Michael.

Well, thank you very much. This was fantastic.

Have a great day.

Bye-bye.

Bye.