Scissorbill

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Chuck Johnson.

Hi, Chuck. Welcome to the program.

Thank you very much.

And where are you calling from?

Helena, Montana.

Great. Well, what’s up?

Well, I was going to ask about the word I’ve heard around here called scissor bill.

Scissor bill. That sounds like a plan to bring down your credit card.

It’ll work that way, won’t it?

Cut your bills in half.

No, but I guess that’s not it, huh?

What is a scissor bill?

The way I’ve heard it used is that it’s someone who’s sort of loafing on the job or lollygagging is another word we use up here too.

But maybe once the boss has got his back turned, loafs a little bit on the job.

Have you ever heard a scissor bill in reference to hogs?

No, I haven’t. What’s that?

Well, the story goes that wild hogs are so mean and so vicious that they had a razorback and a scissor bill, and they’d chew on you just out of meanness.

Ow.

Oh, my gosh.

Ow.

And so razorback and scissor bill are both old terms for wild hogs.

I have a new nickname for Grant.

This is great.

But you’ve probably heard of the bird as well.

There’s a kind of, I believe it’s a seashore tern of some sort, also known as a shearwater, called a scissor bill.

Have you ever heard of those?

Maybe they don’t come out that far.

I have heard of them, and they just skim the top of the water when they fly in, is what I’ve heard anyway.

Well, I’ll tell you, the history of scissor bill, as you’ve used it, it’s interesting.

There’s a long one there.

It goes back more than 100 years.

And there’s a great book called Calf’s Head and Union Tail, Labor Yarns at Work and Play.

And this is by Archie Green.

And what he talks about in this book is just the history of some of the legends and stories that have to do with the labor movement and labor unions and organizing that kind of stuff.

And scissor bill figures very largely in here.

It started out in American English as a reference to people who were either like the bird a scissor bill or who were like the hog a scissor bill.

And I believe it’s mostly the hog.

It’s that whole idea that this is a hog had a mouth that was very sharp.

Have you ever seen the teeth on a hog?

Sometimes they’re very yellow and sharp and vicious.

I hope never to see one.

Supposedly, they look a little bit like the bill of a scissor bill, the bird, which is interesting because the lower part of the beak is much longer than the upper part, and I think this allows them to get into mussels and other kinds of shellfish like that.

In any case, so people called these old farmers who were rough and tough like a wild hog, a sizzle just like the hog.

So it’s a pretty matter of fact way. We often call people by the names of animals to indicate this person is somehow like the animal.

But somewhere along the way, it came to be used by the labor unions to refer to people who were pro-boss and anti-labor or maybe were just the kind of heads down workers who didn’t want to get involved in no movement.

They just wanted to do their work and go home and get the paycheck and not really try to fight for the rights of anybody else, kind of selfish.

And somewhere along the way, it also became generalized to mean any kind of know-nothing or no-account person, as you kind of described it, could be somebody who’s lazy or somebody who doesn’t really work beyond just enough to pay for bed and board.

Now, this is a really short, condensed story of what Archie Green has to say at length in his book.

There’s a ton of data out there, a variety of different ways that this term has been used, but generally it’s about somebody who is bad at what they do or doesn’t do anything.

Oh, that’s very interesting.

Yeah, fascinating. I’d never heard it. I have to tell you, Chuck, I’d never heard it.

That’s great. I sure appreciate learning more about it.

Yeah, well, thank you for calling.

Chuck, we’ll link to Archie Green’s book on our website.

Wonderful. Well, thanks so much. It’s been fun talking to you both.

Okay, thank you.

Bye.

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