“Ta-Da” Echoes a Musical Flourish

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, my name is Julia Sutteth, and I’m from Jacksonville, Florida.

Hey, Julia, welcome to the show.

Hi, Julia, what can we do for you?

I’m interested in the expression, ta-da, and how that came about was,

My husband and I are both at the age where we’re losing words.

And sometimes the words have just gone, and sometimes we know them, but we can’t speak them.

And so he has come up with this expression where he says, ta-da.

And we were with our grandson who just turned three, and he is gaining words.

And so when we say something and he doesn’t know what it means, he says, what does that mean?

And he asked me that when Mike said ta-da to him about something.

He said, what does grandpa mean?

And I was trying to figure it out, and I’ve thought about it for the last couple months.

And I think what Mike is saying is I have something that I needed to do, and I’ve done it successfully.

So, like, if he’s climbed up the stairs to go see Jesse’s house and Jesse opens the door, Mike will say to him, ta-da!

Like, I’ve arrived, you know, or yesterday morning when I was getting him up and he opened his eyes and he said to me, ta-da!

So I think that’s what he means, but I don’t know what that means to other people.

Right.

Are there any associations in your mind with performers, professional performers?

Oh, with that word?

No, I had never heard it.

And it’s not something that he used to say.

He only has started saying it within the last few months as he’s having more and more trouble saying what he wants to be saying.

So no, I’m not familiar with that expression at all.

Yeah, that kind of aphasia can be frustrating, but it sounds like he’s found a pretty decent solution to his problem for now.

I hope it works out in the end.

Yeah.

Ta-da. So what it does is it imitates the sound of a musical flourish meant to embellish the big finish of a performance, like the big moment of a reveal in a magical act.

A lot of people associate it with that. So it’s like it’s supposed to represent a short note and a long note.

So it’s us imitating instruments.

So the instrument would actually perform those two notes, however that would sound.

Yeah.

Oh.

Horns, maybe.

Yeah, I’m thinking of trumpets.

Ta-da!

Or trumpets.

Interestingly, the first thing we know of ta-da in print, spelled T-A-D-A-A, no hyphen, is about a music act where there’s this magician, this conjurer, tells the orchestra that he doesn’t like what they’re doing.

And he says he wants something, you know, he’s disgusted with their performance.

He says, I want a ta-da from you.

And so at the moment that they’re supposed to give him a ta-da, instead of playing their instruments, they all shout out loud, ta-da!

Just to irritate him further, I guess.

That’s so funny.

I can’t imagine where Mike would ever have heard that, though.

It’s really pervasive in our culture, wouldn’t you say?

Yeah, I would agree with that. When I do improv and we play games among ourselves on the team, you know, the idea of the game is to just go faster and faster until somebody screws up.

And we we have embraced that. Ta-da. You know, and if you’re the one who screws up in this game, you just say ta-da.

And it’s a way of embracing that mistake. And it almost sounds like that’s sort of what your husband is doing as well.

You know except that he’s hes not saying I messed up he’s saying I did it correctly.

So it’s kind of the opposite idea thats that’s so interesting huh but he he is claiming

What he just did yeah what he just did yes yes like voila right except that he doesn’t know

Fridge either. Yeah, that’s interesting, isn’t it? Yeah, he is definitely claiming that he just did

Something that was of some significance to somebody. Yeah. Well, Julia, thank you for

Sharing this little tidbit of your life. Love is such a healer, isn’t it? Love is very important.

Yeah. All right. Take care. Well, thank you for letting me be on. That was fun. All right. Bye-bye.

Thanks, Julia.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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