Watershed

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Leanne.

Hi, Leanne, where are you calling from?

I’m calling you from Blacksburg, Virginia.

What can we do for you today?

I’m curious about the word watershed.

Aww.

Now what is you curious about that word?

Well, you want to hear the story?

Sure, tell us the story.

This is the one unanswered question from my graduate school.

25 years ago, in a history course in graduate school, my professor used the expression a watershed moment.

It was a watershed moment in history.

My professor was German, so English was his second language.

I had a classmate from Korea, so English was his second language.

And my Korean classmate asked my professor, what is watershed?

And my professor stood there and said, I don’t know.

And I have just been curious about it from that day.

And I figure there’s a literal meaning and a figurative meaning, and I’m curious about both of them.

That’s so great.

Do you have a guess about it?

Well, I’ve had some thoughts about it because I live in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, according to the sign on the interstate.

And I wonder if from a certain point of elevation, the water must flow in Virginia toward the Chesapeake Bay.

So I’m wondering if a watershed is water, you know, a point from which water flows in a particular direction.

Brilliant.

But I’ve also wondered if it was a little house over the well.

Leanne, that’s what confused me about watershed forever.

I couldn’t picture it.

I was like your professor.

I don’t know.

Grant, what did you do?

I pictured a shed full of water suddenly overflowing, and it was some crucial point.

I pictured a whale or a submarine breaching the surface of the ocean, and the water literally shedding off of the rounded front or top of it.

Yeah.

Here’s the key to it, Leanne.

In English, for hundreds of years, the word shed has also meant a separation or a parting.

And in fact, in the Middle Ages, if you talked about the shed of my crown, you were talking about the part in your hair.

Oh, I’ve had a crooked shred for a long time.

And so your instincts are right when you talk about a landscape, a watershed is a ridge of high land, and it separates the two areas that are drained by different river systems.

So it’s that dividing line, that kind of fork in the road, to mix a metaphor.

So a watershed moment then, Martha, is what?

How do we get from the continental divide to a watershed moment?

Good question.

Well, it’s that dividing line.

I mean, I suppose that your professor, Leanne, was talking about a dividing line in history, right?

I assume so.

Right.

I see.

So it’s a moment which really separates two fundamentally different eras.

Right, right.

It’s a great metaphor now that I understand it.

Yes.

Things were different from this point on.

And now they’re different for you, Leanne, right?

Because you understand?

They are.

This is a watershed moment in my life because now I understand.

I feel like I’ve earned my graduate degree now.

You have.

Thank you so much.

Congratulations, Leanne.

Thank you for your call, Leanne.

Bye.

Upon the watershed.

Do you know that Indigo Girls song, Grant?

That’s what I always think of.

I think I’ve heard that one before, yes.

You know, years ago in the Pleistocene era, I was in a band and we covered that song.

I think it’s called Watershed.

We’ll have to link to it or play it.

Yeah.

Well, if you’ve got a question about a word that’s been bugging you since you went to school, we’d like to help.

Give us a call, 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-WAYWORD.

Or if you’re in front of a computer, you can send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.