Victuals and Vittles

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

This is Melissa. I’m calling from the Milwaukee area.

melissa Hello, Melissa in Milwaukee. Welcome to the show.

Oh, thank you so much.

Hey, I have an interesting thing.

Well, maybe you guys probably have heard everything by now,

But I was speaking with a co-worker one day,

And she put a note on our refrigerator at work,

And it said, Vittles, welcome for everyone.

And then later that day she went, how come no one’s gotten into any of the vittles?

And I said, well, no one knows what they are.

To me, vittles are like boiled snake and gopher jerky or something.

Or skittles with vitamins or something.

Yeah, exactly.

And when I asked her, she had just said, oh, it’s just snacks, a whole bunch of different snacks.

And I said, I’ve never heard of that term.

Ever, ever before. And we kind of got to talking about it, and part of us thought maybe it was

Because she said that it was, she’s part of a black family, that she said that that’s where

She got it. But she’s also from a military family, so it could have been, you know, like going around

To all these different places. And Melissa, how did she spell it? Well, I want, I want to say V-I-T-T-L-E-S,

But, you know, we’re from the Midwest, so it’s pretty much pronounced with a D.

So it could be V-I-D-L-E-S.

So what was it?

This was like candy or homemade desserts or something?

It was just a bunch of different types.

I think there was like a pasta salad in there.

There was some different just food to have.

I love it when people bring food to work.

Yeah, that’s why it’s important to understand language.

To me, Vittles is kind of marked as rural or Western.

I think of it as being like the, oh, prospector, you know?

Yeah, I think of the Beverly Hillbillies in Grand Climate.

Jen, come get your riddles.

I’m sure she’ll love it if that’s what you’re comparing her to.

But it is widespread across the United States, and you can go back and tell her this is such an old word.

It’s old, old, old, old, old, like 700 years old.

No way.

Yeah, and it’s related to Latin words that have to do with nourishment, like vitamin and vital and vitality, those kinds of things.

Well, that’s so cool.

The other thing is the spelling.

Yeah.

We’ve done a couple things with the spelling, right?

There’s a couple things that have happened over the years with this word.

Yeah, I mean, vittles goes back to Latin victualis, which means of nourishment.

So it has that C in it.

And for years it was spelled that way, like victual is what it looked like.

Well, it was borrowed into the French without the C.

Correct.

And we got it from the French without the C.

Right.

And then when people started paying more attention to Latin, they’re like, oh, we need to put the C back in.

But we still don’t pronounce it with the C, right?

Correct.

Is it spelled with the C?

It is.

V-I-C-T-U-A-L-S is like the formal spelling of the word, but you still say vittles.

Oh.

But it can be any kind of food.

Yes.

Any kind of nourishment.

Well, I think I like plates of beans or like—

Yeah, cooked food.

Yeah, cooked food for sure.

Rather than candy bars.

It’s a meal more than a snack.

Yeah.

Oh.

Yeah, but you can spell it either way.

So when the office-wide email goes out, there are vittles in the kitchen.

You’re going to be in the know, and you’re going to know to get there first before all the good stuff is gone, right?

There’s going to be a stampede.

Absolutely.

The best of the best.

I know how that works in an office, right?

Somebody sends out the email, cupcakes in the kitchen.

No, there aren’t.

We have like a text-based system that I tell the girl at the desk next to mine,

I’m like, I just saw donuts walk by.

Yeah, and after the client meetings, right?

Everybody’s like, do you need this room?

No, just waiting for the food.

Yeah, thank you so much for answering that for us.

I’m sure she’ll be interested to know.

Thanks for calling, Melissa.

Call us again sometime, all right?

All right, thank you.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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