If You Figure Out Who Cooter Brown Is, You Should Take His Keys

Hey there, you have A Way with Words. Oh, hi. My name is Hannah Roark. I’m calling from

Shreveport, Louisiana. Oh, we’re glad to have you, Hannah. Well, I used to always hear this

Expression in my family when someone was being mischievous and you wanted to very gently scold

Them, you might call them cooter brown. And as I’ve noticed down through the years, in pop culture,

You might say that someone was drunk as cooter brown. And my mom and I were just wondering,

You know, where that expression came from. And, you know, I’ve since then, I’ve asked people

From around different parts of the South, have you ever heard anyone referred to as cooter brown?

They’re like, yeah, usually when they’re drunk.

And I was like, oh, man.

I just really wondered what the origin of that is and what the story is.

So she would use it when somebody was misbehaving.

Like how much were they misbehaving?

It was very, very gentle scolding.

Like if you were, you know, standing on your head, you know, say, okay, Cooter Brown.

Quit showing off.

Yeah.

So cooter, just so everyone’s clear, C-O-O-T-E-R-B-R-O-W-N, cooter brown.

That is what I would presume, yes.

Yeah, so the drunk is cooter brown.

Sometimes it’s high as cooter brown or as fast as cooter brown,

But a lot of times things are being compared to cooter brown.

There are a couple different stories to tell here.

The first one, let’s say right off the bat, we’re not sure who cooter brown is.

Now, I’ve got some theories.

We’ve talked about this on the show before, but I’ve got a little bit more than the last couple of times we’ve talked about it.

And one of those things is that there was a paper now defunct in Nashville called the Nashville Banner.

That in the mid-1930s started using Cuda Brown as kind of a columnist’s crutch,

Where he was an invented character, kind of like a Joe Sixpack,

Who the columnists could use to spout everyday wisdom.

You know, Cuda Brown says, you know, why don’t people do this?

Or Cuda Brown thinks the political situation is that.

And it’s interesting that this was in 1934, 1935,

That this happened in Nashville and not far away in Memphis, somebody sent a column

From Memphis to a newspaper in Atlanta in 1936 using the expression,

Debtor than Cooter Brown, which is where we have this first comparison of Cooter Brown.

So both of these from Tennessee. And so these two early uses of Cooter Brown are just interesting

Because they’re both from Tennessee,

But I don’t know that that means anything

Because these kind of coincidences happen.

And there are a lot of cooter browns

That you can find in old newspapers

Doing things like getting arrested or going to court

Or just being mentioned as participating

In this event or that event,

And cootie browns as well.

Sometimes you will actually see people

Talking about drunker than cootie browns,

C-O-O-T-I-E.

Langston Hughes uses this expression in some of his writing a couple different times in 1944 and 1950.

But I mention all of this to say I’m not even sure that this is the origin of it.

Because I think the more important thread when we’re trying to get to the root of Cooter Brown is an older expression,

Drunk as a coot, or drunk as a cooter, or drunk as a cootie, which is about 200 years old.

Wow.

And this expression is probably originally American, dates back to the 1820s.

And their first expression that we know from the Dictionary of Americanisms is drunk as a cooter.

Isn’t a cooter a snapping turtle too?

Sometimes it is, especially in Florida.

Yeah.

Yeah, I could see one of those, you know, in the drink.

But it’s not, again, it’s not clear ever what people meant when they talked about coot, cootie, or cooter.

Sometimes it’s just the vague other, you know, just comparing it to something that must be ridiculous or amazing or beyond the pale.

So that’s what we know, Hannah.

If you want to do your own digging, I highly recommend spending a little money on a newspaper database or just going to the Library of Congress and looking at the Chronicling of America digitized newspapers and seeing what you can find for yourself.

I have looked at them for this expression and for Cooter Brown and found some stuff, but maybe you’ll find something I didn’t.

Amazing. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And I’ll do that. I’ll follow up on it.

Yeah, our pleasure. And let us know if you find anything that we haven’t mentioned.

I sure will. Thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

If there’s a word or phrase that’s puzzled you, we’d love to talk with you about it.

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