The medical term for that grainy stuff that collects in the corner of your eyes when you sleep is rheum, but why call it that when you could call it sleepy sand or eye boogers? This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Sleepy Sand”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Joel.
Hi, Joel. Where are you calling from?
Dallas, Texas.
Joel, welcome to the show. How can we help?
Hi, I’m Todd. I have a question about the word that people use to describe the stuff that gets in your eyes when you wake up, the grainy stuff.
Yeah.
I called it sleep growing up, just use sleep as an out.
Yeah, me too.
My wife said Sleepy Sands, and I had a friend growing up who called them iBoogers.
So I was just kind of curious about, are there regional variations on this word?
I don’t know.
I just have never.
I’ve heard so many different things from different people, and I didn’t know if it was just a family thing or what.
Wow.
I don’t know that it’s regional.
It’s definitely a family thing.
I’ve heard iBoogers before.
You have Sleep in Your Eyes in my family, though.
Yeah, we called it Sleepy.
We had a little diminutive.
Sleepy, yeah.
Sleepy in your eyes.
-huh.
Yeah.
There’s a medical term for it.
The body term for it is really kind of bland.
It’s room.
R-H-E-U-M.
Oh.
Yeah.
Besides having that homophonic problem where it sounds like another word, I have room in my eye.
Room for what?
Emote?
Yeah.
Yeah, it comes from the Greek word for to flow.
How did you spell that?
R-H-E-U-M.
Yeah.
Boring word.
I much like the cutesy words that people come up with.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
I love the way in English we turn things into, like, sleep isn’t really an object, but all of a sudden it’s become an object.
Right.
It’s like a process.
I do, too.
You know what we should do with this, Joel?
I mean, we could just list all the ones that we know here, and there’s a ton of them.
I think we need to throw this out to the whole universe of people who listen to this show and just collect them all and talk about all the answers in a future episode.
What do you think?
Yeah.
That sounds great.
Okay.
So here it is.
We’ve got a question for you, a little, what should we call this, fieldwork?
What do you call the gunk that accumulates in the corner of your eyes overnight?
Email us, words@waywordradio.org, or start the conversation on Facebook and Twitter.
So we’re going to see what happens with that.
I’ve probably got a list here of about 15 or so terms that I was able to collect on this.
Don’t go to Wikipedia for your answers.
Give us the ones that you use in your house, all right?
That’s better, right?
Yeah, sleepy sand.
I like that.
Although I do want to mention the one that I think is the grossest.
Of course, why not?
Duck butter.
Duck butter.
Duck butter.
Oh, Lord mercy.
I don’t know.
Why?
Why would you call it duck butter?
That’s gross.
Gross.
I don’t know.
A duck butter.
All right, Joel, we’re going to find out, all right?
We’re going to have big answers for you real soon on the show.
Hang in there.
All right.
Thanks for calling, buddy.
Yeah, thanks.
Bye.
All right, bye-bye.
