Your Possibles

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Michael calling from Omaha, Nebraska.

Michael from Omaha.

Hi, Michael. How are you doing?

All right, Grant, Martha. Glad to talk to you.

Yeah, you too. What’s cooking in Omaha?

Well, I was watching a good old John Wayne movie not too long ago.

Of course, I’ve seen the movie a zillion times,

But during the course of the film where he played a commanding officer

In the late 1800s out there in the Wild West here,

One of his men was killed, and this is how I recall it.

Probably way along, but the point is he asked one of his aides to have him gather his possibles.

And that always stuck in my head.

I whipped out my smartphone and looked on the dictionary and came up with nothing looking

As thesaurus.

By the way, is there another word for thesaurus?

And I just kind of forgot about it until I thought about you guys.

Okay.

Oh, so the possible.

So John Wayne was talking about somebody else fetching his possible.

That sounds really naughty.

Well, it can be, actually, in modern usage.

But in the old-fashioned usage, going back to the early 1800s, maybe even before that,

Possibles was more commonly used just to mean one’s personal belongings,

The things that you might take with you on a trip.

And when it came to the United States, it became more used by,

At least attributed to frontiersmen and woodsmen and trappers and cowboys

Cowboys and people who are out there riding rough and just had a knapsack or a saddlebag

Or that sort of thing.

So it’s all the things you might possibly need.

Oh.

So like a Swiss Army knife is a possible.

Well, yeah, but it also would include an extra hat, a spare long john, some dried beans that

You might want to soak, you know, that sort of thing.

Just possibles.

Things that you keep in your pocket, like my car keys make it possible for me to drive.

My wallet makes it possible for me to ID myself and do business.

Yeah, it’s the bits and bobs of daily life, just the stuff you need to get along.

There are other uses of possible as a noun, and there’s some that are related to philosophy and psychology.

But they almost always have this larger meaning of the things that one might do, might need, might say.

So it’s always about what possibly might be required of a situation.

This is why my suitcases are always so heavy, because I just imagine so many possibles, you know.

And then I use maybe a tenth of what I pack.

It’s good to be prepared, Girl Scout.

It is.

Thanks for calling, Michael.

Glad to help.

I leave it defining to the definers there.

Exactly.

Take care now.

Happy trails.

Bye-bye.

Thank you very much.

We can’t leave this unsaid.

You did say it sounded naughty, and I said it could be.

Yes.

We’ve talked about this on the show.

Do you remember when we talked to somebody about washing your possibles?

Yes.

Washing up to possible and down to possible.

Yes.

You might wash your possibles.

And then you watch Possible.

And then you watch Possible, yes.

Well, if you’ve been watching a movie and something jumped out at you, call us 877-929-9673.