Margie from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, says that sometimes her childhood behavior scared the daylights out of her mother, but she never understood exactly what that actually meant beyond giving her mother a terrible fright. In the past, the word daylights could be used to mean “eyes,” which are, after all, apertures in your head where daylight gets in. In the late 18th century, to darken someone’s daylights could mean to “blacken someone’s eyes” or “knock them senseless.” Over time, daylights also came to mean “a person’s inner essence or vital spirit,” or “the light within” a person, so scaring the daylights out of someone would be quite traumatic indeed. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Scare the Daylights Out”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Margie from Pittsburgh.
Hi, Margie in Pittsburgh. Welcome to the show. What’s up?
Well, I always wondered about this phrase that my mother used when I scared her or she was angry with me or something.
She would say to me, Margie Ann, you scared the daylights out of me.
And I always wondered what that meant.
So the scared the daylights, like there were daylights inside of her? What? Yeah, it’s hard to, what does that mean?
I mean, I had this vision of, you know how little orphan Annie, that cartoon, she had no eyeballs, she had no pupils in her eyes.
I pictured my mother with like her, not her hair on fire, but you know, like going oink, oink, oink.
Yeah.
Those eyes are classic, right?
They’re like little pieces of partially eaten by or something.
And so like she had no more pupils in her eyes because I scared them out or something.
I don’t know.
Scared the daylights.
Now, let me ask you, Margie, have you heard daylights used in any other expressions?
Because I think there were a few.
No, that’s the only one I’ve ever heard.
And did she say scared the daylights or scared the living daylights?
I can’t remember that she added living to it.
I think it was that she scared the daylights out of me.
Okay, okay.
I just wonder because I heard that expression a lot growing up,
And it was always the living daylights out of you.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, I’ve probably heard people say it, but I don’t remember my mom saying it that way.
Okay, well, it’s really interesting that you mention little orphan Annie and her eyes
Because there is an old meaning of daylights that actually means eyes,
Those holes in your head where the daylight gets in.
In the late 18th century, people would talk about someone’s daylights being fixed on the ground.
You know, they’re just looking down at the ground or somebody rolled their daylights because they were, you know, rolling their eyes.
And there was an old expression that meant to darken somebody’s daylights.
And that’s when you give them a black eye.
You know, you punch them and you darken their daylights.
But there’s another element to the darkening of daylights, though, Martha.
It’s not just to blacken their eyes, but to hit them in such a way that their eyes swell shut.
Sure.
Or sometimes even to knock them senseless.
So there’s another level there.
Yeah, the classical dictionary of the vulgar tongue from 1796 has an entry where it quotes somebody saying,
Plump his peepers or daylights, meaning give him a blow in the eyes.
So you plump their peepers.
But there’s another layer to all of this that might be the explanation for scaring the daylights out of someone.
And that is the idea that daylights could also mean somebody’s essence, their inside.
You know, just that light within, I guess, would be the way that you’d describe it.
So the inner soul, kind of the way that you can look at a living person or animal and tell they’re alive.
Just there’s something happening in the eyes.
Mm—
Right, right.
The eyes being the windows of the soul.
Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
Well, thank you so much for calling and sharing this.
Oh, I just love your show.
I may call back because I have some other things I want to talk to you about, too.
Absolutely.
100%, Margie.
Oh, Margie.
You’ve been a delight.
Thank you for sharing.
Oh, thank you for taking my call.
Yep.
All right.
Be well.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Well, knock the daylights out of us with your language and linguistic questions
Or tell us your puns and your riddles and your jokes.
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