Tribble Meaning Pompom

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, I’m Polly from Martha’s Vineyard. Thanks for having me on today.

Hi, Polly. Welcome to the show.

Hey, Polly.

I work at my local library here on the vineyard, and it’s been chilly lately.

So the other day I wore a knit cap to work, like a beanie.

And when I got to work, my wonderful co-worker, my friend Anne, said, I love your hat, but you need a tribble.

It’ll be really cute on top. It keeps your head warmer, and plus they look really cute.

So I was like, what’s a tribble?

And she said, you’ll see, I’ll bring you one.

So the next day I came into work and on my desk, I found this little fur ball.

It looked like a faux fur ball or what I would call a pom-pom for my hat.

So I attached it to my hat and she was right.

It looked super cool.

It made my head a little warmer.

And I went to thank her as any coworker would.

And she said, I said, thanks so much for the pom-pom. I love it.

And she said, no, it’s not a pom-pom. It’s a tribble.

And I asked her why it was called that.

And she said, everyone in the, you know, I’m surrounded by librarians and there’s a lot of knitting, sewing people.

And she said, we just know them as tribbles.

And to me, it’s a pom-pom.

And then we were kind of sitting in a group and talking about it.

And everyone started to weigh in and Google.

And I just said, hold on a minute.

I’m going to call Martha and Grant, get A Way with Words, and let’s see what they say.

So here I am.

So I’m pretty sure that your colleagues probably came up with the story of the word tribble, which is that it’s an invented word that had to do with creatures in a Star Trek episode.

Is that what they came up with?

Well, people did start saying that.

One of the librarians did, and I’ve never watched Star Trek, so I wasn’t sure.

And then a few others were like, oh, I don’t know, maybe that was a word before Star Trek or not.

No, apparently it was invented by the writer David Gerald, who came up with the term Tribble for these furry little creatures that don’t do a whole lot more besides coo and purr and reproduce.

And if you’re going to watch a Star Trek episode, this one is really a classic because they’re brought onto the starship and they start reproducing.

And it’s just really cute because they’re these cute little things.

I used to have pink bedroom slippers that looked a lot like Tribbles.

You know, they’re just these fuzzy little creatures.

And the episode was called The Trouble with Tribbles.

And David Gerald later said that originally they were called fuzzies in his story, but he decided to come up with a different word.

And he was just goofing around and came up with the word Tribble.

And people picked that up.

That episode was from 1967.

And people have picked that up because it’s a useful word.

It sort of sounds like what it looks like, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

And the word pom-pom, on the other hand, has been around since at least the 1500s.

It goes all the way back to Middle French, possibly this term that means a tuft of ribbons.

And it may come from the word pomp, as in ostentatious display.

So it’s a little thing that you put on your hat to make it a little bit more ostentatious.

I guess, a little bit more decorated.

But that term has been around for a long time.

But the term triple comes from that Star Trek episode.

It’s funny because when I said thank you for the pom-poms, she said, no, pom-poms are only made of yarn.

And as a knitter and all these people who are very well-versed in that, she said, no, we only refer to pom-poms as yarn.

So I think triples seem like they’re a new, obviously, but have certainly caught on.

And she said that’s just what everybody calls them in that world.

Yeah, and if you Google this and kind of do a Google search where you do minus Star Trek and minus some other things, you will find plenty of people in the crafting world and the knitting world who use tribbles to refer to this decoration, and they don’t even ever mention Star Trek.

They just only know this particular fur item as a tribble.

That’s the way that they use it.

So it’s actually taken on the second meaning.

Yeah, it’s nice to see lexical change happening before our very eyes.

Thanks for all your hard work, guys.

Seriously, it means so much to us.

Say hi to everybody.

Take care, guys.

Okay.

All right.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, lexical change is around us, and something happened at your work that made you go, what? Where does that come from?

Well, we’re the people who can tell you.

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