A listener recalls that during his early years in Chicago, Illinois, boys starting a kickoff in a neighborhood football game would line up in a row and sing out Warney! He heard the same odd shout in different Chicago neighborhoods, but after leaving Chicago, he found that others were unfamiliar with it. Warney! is adapted from Warning!, a shout long used in chasing games similar to tag. Collections of children’s games in the U.S. and Canada record it as early as the 1860s. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of ““Warney!”: The Chicago Football Kickoff Shout Adapted from “Warning!””
Hi there.
You have A Way with Words.
Hello.
This is Jamal.
How are you?
Jamal, I’m doing well.
And yourself?
I’m doing great.
I’m at wonderful sunny day here in South Carolina.
We’re glad to have you, Jamal.
What’s on your mind today?
So I used to get dropped off early in the morning.
My mom was a school teacher, and I’d be there with a football waiting for the boys to come in elementary school to play.
And the guys would eventually come.
It’d be five on five, and we would play football.
Now, originally, I was from Pennsylvania, but here I am finding myself in first grade in Chicago, in elementary school, playing on the South Side Chicago with these boys.
And we would all line up in a row, and we kick the ball off or we throw the ball off.
But they would all chant at the same time.
Waa nay.
And I’m wondering, like, how does everybody know that, first of all?
And in different areas of Chicago, it was not just for that one little community.
Yeah.
All of the boys knew this as the word, like a colloquial term to go, to model, to run.
Got it.
Everybody would go.
There’s some musicality to it for sure.
So all the other places that you lived besides Chicago, you had never heard that?
Never heard that before.
Ok.
Alright.
And you know what?
It’s it’s this weird remnant.
This it’s this weird relic or remnant from from other children’s games, not from football exactly.
And so what that is is a form of the word warning, w a r n I n g.
And so when you say it loud, full full…
Fully throated and, you know, with some kind of music to it, it kinda gets corrupted a little bit.
You’ll even see it spelled sometimes in print as w a r n e y.
And what it was was this thing that you would shout basically to say the game is…
The game has commenced.
Like, you know, the game is afoot.
It’s all starting now.
And it was particularly associated with certain kinds of games that are more or less a form of tag, where there’s a person who’s it and they have to hold their hands clasped together, and their goal is to not unclasp them and there’s certain kinds of things that happen if you capture them or they capture you.
So there’s all these complicated rules for that game, and there’s a bunch of other games that had it as well.
You start up by basically saying, everybody ready?
Warning.
Meaning, we’re starting now, and I’m it, and I’m now allowed to chase you because I have given you the warning.
You know, it’s interesting.
I took my father to the hospital the other day.
He was just going to see his regular physician.
Mhmm.
And he has Alzheimer’s.
He’s 84 years old, and I told him the whole scenario.
And do you know what he said to us?
What?
He was like, warning.
He said warning.
Oh, I knew it.
How about that?
And my mother my mother and I looked at him, and we we we laughed.
But you you doubt him to know what you’re saying.
But my dad is originally from Chicago.
So, of course, he would know.
Yeah.
Well, there was a time when that was far more common.
I’m I’m interested to hear if it’s still common in Chicago.
Yeah.
And if you’ve got a a father who’s 84, you’re probably not a spring chicken yourself.
So who knows if the kids today still use it?
But…
Well, never know.
You never know.
But you know, it was…
It was…
There’s records of it in various collections of children’s games in The US and Canada and different mentions over the years since the eighteen sixties of that being used as a shout before games.
How about before games.
Yes.
And here I thought it was from some militarized combat or warn…
You know, warning.
Know, in children play, sometimes it is like war.
Yeah.
But, Jamal, there we go.
Your your dad knew the answer.
We’ve confirmed it.
You’ve got you’ve got a solution locked in.
Amazing.
Well, thank you so much for figuring that out.
And here I thought it was the colloquial term for let’s go, one, two, three, go.
You know?
Nope.
Nope.
A good guess, but nope.
Jamal, I will give some time and best wishes to to your dad as well.
Thank you so much.
Appreciate that.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
How did they talk out your way?
What’s what’s the word or phrase that you used and everybody looked at you like you had two heads?
Give us a call and talk about it.
