A Lakeland, Florida, woman wonders about the use of the term floodin’ or flooding to describe someone wearing pants that are too short, as in, “He’s floodin.'” There are many terms for such ill-fitting pants, including flash-flooders, flood pants, floods, high waders, and high waters, all based on the image of keeping one’s pants above the ankles in order to avoid getting them wet in a flood. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Wearing Your Pants Too High”
Hi, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Whitney calling from Lakeland, Florida.
Hey, Whitney, what’s going on?
Nothing much. I was actually calling about the word flooding.
Floodden.
Floodden.
I saw a young person walking and their pants were intentionally above their ankles, their long pants.
And so I was reflecting, I was like, man, when I was a kid, we would call that flooding.
But there was like this negative connotation to it, almost as if like, you know, your family couldn’t afford to have pants that went all the way to your ankle.
And that made me start to think, where did flooding, how did it even come about?
Are there geographical instances for it?
When did it get the negative connotation?
What a good question.
Yeah, I know that feeling. Your parents buy the school clothes in August, and then by springtime, you look like a potato on two toothpicks because your pants have crawled up your ankles and exposed so much ankle, you look like soft pine waiting to be milled.
Right.
I know that feeling. Yeah, my brother, I grew faster than my brother, and he used to tease me relentlessly. Actually, the word he used was high waters, as if you’re going clamming out at the shore or something like that.
But I know that feeling and there’s a bunch of other words for this not just flooding which is just a general description of what someone’s doing when they’re wearing their cuffs of their pants too high but variations like flash flooders to refer to the pants themselves or flood pants or just floods flood and high waders as well and these these all go back like I find high highwaters as an adjective referring to pants that are too short back to the 1850s.
Wow.
Yeah.
So I think people have been making fun of each other for clothes that don’t fit quite right for a long time.
Certainly kids can be heartless.
Oh, yeah.
No, that was the context that I remembered it in.
Like you didn’t want someone to tell you you were flooding because, you know, they’re talking about your family and your means.
Yeah, exactly.
Absolutely.
I think highwaters tends to be more in the Midwest than any place else.
But flooding, as far as y’all know, only refers to the clothing.
It doesn’t have another application.
Well, not in this.
I mean, obviously it refers to flooding as in water flooding a place.
So the idea is you’re wearing your pants high as if there’s a flood around you and you’re trying to keep your clothes dry.
So as if you’ve worn capris or waders on purpose just to, you know, just to not get wet.
Yeah, I mean, I would ask different people in terms of generations as trying to get a feel for, you know, if they use the word flood and how they used it.
And high water did come up a couple times,
But it was mostly from folks from the northeast or out west.
Oh, interesting.
And so I figured that there was, like, flooding might be more southern in root.
Also just, you know, the missing G, that’s just so.
Yeah, flooding instead of flooding.
Right, right.
Yeah, missing G.
Well, cool, Whitney.
Thank you for your call.
I really appreciate it.
No, thank you all, and thank you for what you’re doing on this show.
Take care now.
Oh, thanks, Whitney.
You too.
Stay dry.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
Bye-bye.
Email words@waywordradio.org.
