“Jockey Box” vs. “Glove Box”: Western Usage for a Car Compartment

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how are you?

Great, who is this?

This is Gabriel Spencer.

Hiya, Gabriel, where are you calling from?

From a little bit north of Baltimore, Maryland.

Yeah, so what’s up?

Well, I had a question about an experience I had.

I thought that you might be interested and that you might know the answer.

I was visiting my friend in Portland, Oregon,

And I had a rental car and he got in

And there were some papers on the seat there.

And so I just told him to go ahead and put the papers in the jockey box.

And he looked at me not quite knowing what I meant, and so I repeated it.

I said, just go ahead and put those in the jockey box.

And he just kept looking at me.

So I pointed to it so he didn’t understand what I meant.

And he told me he’d never heard of that word before, jockey, or that.

He thought you wanted him to stick it in his underwear.

That’s right.

Something like that.

Anyway, so he said he’s always called the jockey box a glove compartment.

And I’ve heard of that too, but I was interested in that he had never heard of jockey box before.

Yeah.

So my question is, where did I get that expression from, and am I the only one who uses that word?

Well, I tell you, I never heard that growing up.

I used to say glove compartment, and I heard older people say glove box.

What about you, Grant?

Same story here.

Before I got into language biz, it was nothing I would have ever encountered before.

But let me ask you, Gabriel, where are you from?

You’re in Maryland now, but are your roots there?

Well, I have, I guess, some scattered roots.

I grew up as an Army brat for part of my life, moving around from Army base to Army base.

Then I went to middle school and high school in Logan, Utah.

And my parents are still living there.

And then otherwise, I moved around quite a bit from Washington, D.C. area to Long Island, and now I’m here in Baltimore.

Yeah.

Did you hear the bells go off in our heads just now when you mentioned Utah?

No.

What about that?

I guess maybe I’m just hearing the bells in my own head.

Those are the voices, Martha.

They just sound like bells sometimes.

They’re saying, Utah, Utah, Northwest, Jockey Box.

Right.

There’s a strong connection there.

My dad is from Idaho, and my mom is from California.

There we go.

There we go.

Perfect.

That’s close enough.

Because jockey box is very much specific to that part of the country.

I mean, it’s a little widespread, but it shows up again and again in the historical record in Idaho and Utah.

And I think the idea is that at least as early as the 1890s, there was a box under the driver’s seat in a wagon where he could put little small articles.

And, you know, the jockey, the guy who was driving the vehicle.

Just about that time, they started coming up with prototypes of automobiles and all of that,

So it makes sense that that would get applied to automobiles.

The earliest use that we know of is from 1881 in a newspaper in Idaho.

And it’s funny, this word really hasn’t spread that far from that part of the country.

People east of the Rockies are all pretty much going to be befuddled

When you say chocky box instead of glove box or glove compartment.

Well, hey, Gabriel, I suspect that you’ve just introduced a whole huge swath of the country to that expression, jockey box.

Thanks for sharing with us, Gabriel.

Well, thanks for shedding some light on that.

Sure.

I appreciate it.

All right.

All right, bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

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