What Cheer

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi, who’s this?

Thanks for taking my call.

Yeah, sure.

Oh, Richard White in Texas.

Richard, welcome to the show. How can we help?

Well, something that’s always puzzled me is one time I was visiting relatives up in Iowa, and there’s a town that we drove through with an unusual name, and the name is What Cheer. The two words, W-H-A-T-C-H-E-E-R, What Cheer. What does that mean? I’ve always puzzled over what that meant.

-huh. And did you ask around?

Well, somebody was saying there in town that it had something to do with the Civil War, like a Civil War greeting or something, and I thought, that’s kind of a puzzle. But that’s all I ever heard.

Mm-Yeah, well, what cheer has long been a friendly greeting for hundreds and hundreds of years. What I find really interesting about it is the word cheer itself in English means simply an emotional state or disposition or mood or humor. And so you can have sorry cheer, you can have dull cheer, you can have heavy cheer, or you can have wrathful cheer. Those are all examples of words that have been used in connection with cheer.

So when you’re saying what cheer to somebody, you’re asking, how are you doing? What kind of mood are you in? And there are different stories floating around about why that particular expression was applied to a name in eastern Iowa. There’s one story that goes that one of the early residents was originally from Providence, Rhode Island, and wanted to do something in honor of his hometown. And apparently the expression what cheer was closely associated with Providence, Rhode Island, and the idea that when European settlers came to that site in Rhode Island, they were greeted by Native Americans there who said what cheer neetop, which means neetop in the Narragansett language means friend.

So it may have something to do with that, but that’s just one of the stories that’s floating around about why it’s called what cheer. And they literally were speaking English because they’d gotten it from other settlers, right?

So just to clarify, in the 1600s, Europeans landed in what is now Rhode Island. The Native Americans greeted them with what cheer? Somebody from Rhode Island moved to Iowa when they needed a name for the town. He possibly suggested it, and then they used it.

Yes, that’s one of the stories floating around. Now, the Civil War story, there’s not much to that because the expression is 400 years older than the Civil War, right? So today we would say, how you doing?

Yeah, yeah. How are you feeling? How goes it?

Yeah, although I like what you’re…

Well, thank you so much. I just really enjoyed it. That’s really amazing.

Well, you’re welcome. Thanks for calling. Call us again sometime.

Okay.

All right, bye-bye.

So there’s a Harry Potter connection I want to make.

What?

Have you seen the movies or read the books?

I’m reading them now.

So there’s a character named Tonks who can change her physical appearance. And she’s known for saying Watcher.

Oh.

W-O-T-C-H-E-R. And Watcher is an abbreviated, kind of abridged form of Watcher. And it’s used in, sometimes it’s described to the Cockneys or East London, but it’s generally kind of a middle or lower class greeting to say hello to somebody.

Watcher.

Yeah, W-O-T-C-H-E-R, right?

Yeah, so if you read Harry Potter and wondered about Watcher, it’s a form of Watcher. Basically, how you doing?

How about that?

See, I didn’t know because I’m told I’m still a squib, whatever that means. I don’t know what it means yet. Because I’m still working on book two.

Born to a magical family, but you don’t have powers.

Oh, is that it?

Yes.

Oh.

A muggle is born to a non-magical family and doesn’t have powers.

I knew that about muggles, but I did not know that. People keep telling me I’m a squib, and they wouldn’t tell me why.

And to plug this into literature in another place, Shakespeare used Wat Cheer in at least three of his plays. So Wat Cheer has kind of been there in the Anglosphere for a very long time and pops up again and again. You have to just connect to the pieces, as we always say on the show. Every word has a story. It leaves an imprint. There’s a spore.

Yep.

And that’s a great one. And now I want to adopt that.

Watcher.

Watcher.

Might sound a little fake.

All right.

I’ll finish the Harry Potter series first.

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