Michelle in Fort Worth, Texas, says she answers nosy relationship questions with single as a jaybird, meaning comfortably unpartnered. That exact phrase isn’t common, but it fits a larger pattern: speakers detach as a jaybird from the familiar naked as a jaybird and use it as a folksy intensifier, as in happy as a jaybird, saucy as a jaybird, or sober as a jaybird. The origin of naked as a jaybird is uncertain; one possibility points to a newly hatched jay’s bare skin. An older English comparison was naked as a robin. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of ““Single as a Jaybird” Isn’t Common, but Other Adjectives “As a Jaybird” Are”
Welcome to A Way with Words.
Hi, my name is Michelle, and I’m calling from Fort Worth, Texas.
What’s going on, Michelle?
Hi, Michelle. Welcome.
So I actually had a question.
I have this phrase that I’ve been saying for years, and, you know, I think I read it somewhere, but I honestly don’t have any idea.
So, you know, a lot of times when, you know, people are kind of, you know, getting to know you and prying into your past,
And they’ll ask, you know, if you’re single or not, of course.
And then one of the things that I’ve always kind of said is in response is, you know, no, I’m single as a jaybird.
And I’ve actually had a couple of people actually ask me recently where that came from.
And I have no idea.
It’s always been something that I kind of said.
And so when you say single as a jaybird, what do you mean exactly?
I mean, is that more single than single?
Single?
Is it a particular kind of single?
Are you really digging it?
Single by nature, I think.
Single by nature and rather relaxed and comfortable about it, I think, is the vibe.
Okay.
And jaybird usually refers to the blue jay, which is not a flocking species, right?
The jaybird isn’t a species that tends to amass in large numbers and fly around together in these murmurations or anything like that, right?
So they are singletons, so to speak.
More interesting to me is what I think has happened here is that you have joined a fairly large number of people who have taken the old expression naked as a jaybird and just separated out the as a jaybird part and turned it into a form of emphasis or kind of a simile of emphasis.
We used to have this expression in English, naked as a robin.
But somewhere along the way, it switched to naked as a jaybird, even though we don’t typically call the birds jaybirds.
And one theory is that bird used to just mean the chick, not actually the whole actually adult bird.
And another part of that is possibly jays, I believe, are born featherless.
And they’re very, you know, their skin is obviously showing.
They don’t have feathers.
So if you’re naked as a jaybird, you do this little pale pink thing.
But in any case, so you can find now, if you look it up, you’ll find people who put things like crazy as a jaybird, mean as a jaybird, sober as a jaybird, happy as a jaybird, antic as a jaybird, quite a few of these.
And so that as a jaybird now is just mainly used for emphasis.
And I think that sounds like what you’re doing there.
Do you use the term naked as a jaybird, Michelle?
No, I actually have never heard that part.
I probably just absorbed it from someone else at some point.
Oh, really?
That’s interesting because naked as a jaybird is really common.
Yeah, I would think that would be the oldest one.
And then all these others spun off from it.
It’s the oldest of the as a jaybird forms, but naked as a robin came before naked as a jaybird.
Interesting.
So what do you think about that, Michelle?
Do you think there’s a possibility that it’s just a borrowed bit of emphasis you’re using there?
Yeah.
You know, I had a bad habit as a kid.
Well, I guess a good bad habit.
I would just read all the time.
And so a lot of times I would just absorb things from context clues.
I’d read them, but I would never hear anybody say them.
And so sometimes I would absorb the context clues incorrectly and not realize that I was kind of off on the definition.
So I might have just kind of absorbed it somewhere and then permutated it in my mind.
Well, that’s fascinating.
We’ll own it.
I mean, I’m no bird expert, but the habits of the J have them frequently being so low or at least not appearing in large numbers.
And it sounds like what Grant is saying is that you’re not the only one who uses it that way.
Single as a jaybird is not very common, but as a jaybird being added on to some other adjective is very common.
Happy as a jaybird or saucy as a jaybird was one I found that I really liked.
Saucy as a jaybird.
Cool?
Yeah, very cool.
Thank you so much.
Yeah, sure.
Thanks for reaching out.
We appreciate it.
Bye.
Thanks for calling.
Bye-bye.
