A man in Red Lodge, Montana, says he and his wife sometimes accuse each other of being a sneaky pete. It’s an affectionate expression they use if, say, one of them played a practical joke on the other. The origin of this term is uncertain, although it may have to do with the fact that in the 1940’s sneaky pete was a term for cheap, rotgut alcohol that one hides from the authorities. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Sneaky Pete”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, how are you guys doing today?
Doing well. Who is this and where are you?
My name is Matt Ernst and I’m calling today from Red Lodge, Montana.
Red Lodge, Montana. Welcome to the show, Matt. What is up?
My wife and I have a little thing that we would say to each other and we both assumed that the other one got it from the other one. So we will call each other once in a while when you catch the other, not in a major infraction, but doing something, a little practical joke or something, a sneaky Pete. We’ll say, oh, you sneaky Pete. And she said that to me one day. I said, you got that from me. She goes, no, my mom said it. And so I grew up hearing my mom say sneaky Pete. She grew up hearing her mom say sneaky Pete. And I asked my mom about it and she had no idea where it came from. And she thought that her mother had said it when she was a child. So my question is, who’s Pete? Why is he so sneaky? Oh my gosh, I need a chart. Sneaky Pete. And so what is this? You are sneaking into the cabinet to get somebody else’s special treat, like their cookies.
Exactly.
You wouldn’t refer to somebody that was breaking into your car or committing a heinous crime as sneaky Pete. But yeah, if you’re trying to sneak a cookie off my plate or pull a practical joke on me, it’s, oh, you sneaky Pete. Or the thing we do in my house where my wife and I will silently move the basket of laundry to the other person’s side of the bed as a hint.
That would be a sneaky Pete infraction, I think.
Sounds like sneaky Grant.
No, she doesn’t, too.
She’s like, oh, the cats were there.
Right.
The cool thing about sneaky Pete is we do have some recorded uses of it, pretty much like you guys say it. At least as far back as the 1960s, we have people using the verb sneaky Pete, meaning to sneaky Pete around, which means the pussyfooter kind of like act suspiciously, that sort of thing.
But we also have at the same time sneaky Pete more or less is an adjective. It’s really kind of more of an attributive noun, which just means suspicious or secret or confidential.
But older than that still is a sneaky pee that refers to alcohol, usually really bad alcohol, like rot gut. Or one of the sources has it listed as a fortified muscatel, whatever that means.
That sounds good.
But it’s terrible, terrible wine. And sometimes it’s used in prisons to refer to the pruno, the wine that they make from raisins, whatever food they can filch from the cafeteria and prisons. But it’s been going on since at least like 1941 that sneaky Pete is also referred to an alcohol. But the connection there in my mind is it’s an alcohol that you might put, say, in a boot flask or that you would keep from the authorities or the cheap stuff that you could only buy at the really terrible corner store in the bad neighborhood because they don’t check your ID because you’re under 21.
You know what I’m saying?
It’s like that kind of, it’s not alcohol that you serve at dinner with fine people, not at all.
But it would refer to the actual alcohol.
Yeah, it would refer to alcohol.
Like a bottle of Sneaky Pete.
Okay.
But older than that, older than that is a dance called Sneaky Pete, which one of the sources from about 1904 describes as an old-time cakewalk two-step.
Now, do you know what a cakewalk is?
No, I know what a two-step is, but I’m not familiar with a cakewalk.
So a cakewalk is kind of like musical chairs with dancing couples. You have couples dancing, the music plays, and whenever you stop, you’re standing on a square or a marker on the floor.
Whoever is on the square or a marker stays in, and if a couple is not on the marker, you leave.
And the last couple, and they’ll take one of these markers away for every song that they play, the last couple left wins the cake or all of the cakes, depending on how you do it.
They’re in the center of the room, usually made for the fundraiser by the people who are there.
And anyway, so I’ve been thinking about this and thinking, what if the Sneaky Pete dance was so named because it better positioned you to win the cakes in the cakewalk?
I don’t know.
Interesting.
It’s a theory with no evidence.
You were kind of not being dishonest, but kind of trying to play a trick or make sure that you would buy the win for yourself.
I don’t know what it looks like, but what if it were a splay-leg two-step where you could actually stand on two squares at once?
That would be a Sneaky Pete.
Well, it sounds like there’s no -peat, that there’s no peat who inspired.
No.
My guess is that it has to do with the assonance of sneaky and peat.
Interesting.
Well, that absolutely answers my question.
I sure appreciate it.
Yeah, our pleasure.
Our pleasure.
But go forth and know that there are many other people using sneaky peat to mean suspicious or surreptitious behavior.
Well, good.
All right.
Well, I will try not to do much sneaky peating around.
Thanks, Matt.
Yeah, behave, Matt.
Thank you.
Bye.
All right.
Bye-bye.
Call us, 877-929-9673.
Peter Anthony Crisafi aka Sneaky Pete was born in 1919 in New York and was an accomplished pool player. He traveled around playing for money. He stole his favorite house cue from Flambonis in New York and had it made into two pieces that screwed together so he could take it with him.