Scooter Poot and Scooter Toot

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, guys. My name is Logan Weber. I’m calling from Greenville, North Carolina.

Hi, Logan. Welcome to the show.

Hey, Logan. What’s up?

I have a question about a phrase I grew up hearing, scooter poot.

Scooter poot? Is that a noun or a verb?

I’ve heard it in both ways, actually.

So basically in usage, I would hear like, so what did you do today? Oh, I went scooter pooting. Or I did some scooter pooting today.

So mostly as a verb, I guess.

Okay.

So if you’re scooter pooting, what are you doing?

So in how I understood it, it’s kind of just like going around town, doing errands, kind of just piddling around, just driving around town, I guess.

Who’s saying this?

Well, my mother actually was the one I heard it the most from. I guess it would be like my mom and my grandma on my mom’s side.

So they weren’t necessarily on a scooter riding around?

No, no, no. We’ve never had a scooter. We’ve never owned a scooter. So yeah, it’s always just in cars.

I kind of thought it may be scooter related, just like maybe the sound a scooter makes when you’re driving it around, but I never knew.

And have you heard anybody outside your family use this term?

No, not once.

Okay, because this term has been floating around for a while.

And I believe the earliest version of it is scooter pooping with a P rather than a T.

Yeah, at least back to the late 1930s.

And in fact, you can look at databases of newspapers and there’s one little story that made the rounds again and again and again in 1938 when a reporter in Savannah, Georgia, wrote a little piece about a conversation that he had with a girl who said she’d been invited to go scooter pooping.

And this reporter had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.

So he asked some of the younger employees at the newspaper, and he learned that scooter pooping is, quote, currently a popular term for going out and having a good time.

And the reporter ended the little story by saying that he returned to his typewriter feeling very old.

Well, that’s even more interesting than I was expecting.

Scooter pooping, okay.

Scooter pooping, yeah.

Is there, like, an origin why they, I guess, where the poop part came from?

No, that’s the mystery, Logan.

That is a big mystery.

We’ve got theories, though.

Oh, wow.

Don’t we, Martha?

Yeah, I mean, part of it is just the fun of the rhyme, I think, scooter pooping.

But it could be just, you know, tooting around, tooling around.

It’s just the idea that you’re not really making a lot of progress.

You’re just, you know, putt-putting from place to place.

Yeah, and scooter is an old slang term for automobile.

So it could have had to do with that.

But we’ve gotten calls over the years about this.

Beverly Sanders called us last year and left a voicemail talking about, actually she was asking about another phrase that her mother used to use.

Instead of saying, well, land’s sake, or my goodness, her mother would say, well, my cow on a surfboard.

But in passing, she also mentioned that her mother and her friends, when they were going out at night to go clubbing or socializing, they would go scooter pooping.

I’m not sure where she was going.

Around the 1950s.

We also heard from Rachel Waters from Wilmore, Kentucky, and she knew it as Scooty Poopin’, which she learned from her former Kentucky in-laws.

We also heard from Kelly Gilliam in New Yorktown, Virginia, Lindsey Green from Arizona, and D. Morton in Texas, who all knew some form of the term.

So it’s gotten out there.

It’s still in use here and there, and people still know it.

There’s a lot of scooter pooping going on out there.

So it’s national.

Okay.

Yeah, it does seem to be associated mainly southern, though.

It does seem to be mainly southern.

And interestingly, the earliest use we found in print is attributed to a boy in North Carolina in 1937, which is where you are now.

So I don’t know that there’s a North Carolina connection, but it was just an interesting coincidence.

Yeah, that is actually way more interesting than I was suspecting.

Well, Logan, we’re really glad you called.

Happy scooter pooping.

Yeah.

Thank you so much.

You too, guys.

Thank you so much.

All right.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Thanks, Logan.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Children, this is the line to call when your parents say something mystifying.

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877-929-9673.

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