Zoris and Tabis

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Dexter calling in from San Diego. How are you?

Doing well. Good to talk with you, Dexter. What’s up?

Hi, neighbor.

When I was growing up, my family referred to a type of footwear by the name dories. And these, I came to later know them as flip-flops, but my whole life as a child, I only knew the word dories. I never heard flip-flop. And now, since I’ve heard flip-flop, it seems like no one else that I know of calls them Zorys. And I’m just curious about, like, is this just a family term? Where does this come from?

My parents still say Zorys. It’s always kind of perplexed me that no one else uses this word because I find it more satisfying than flip-flops. So Zorys, that’s Z-O-R-I-S, Zorys.

You know, I think that would be a good sewing.

Well, what have your parents said when you asked them about them calling the footwear Zoris?

They met in Micronesia. My mom’s from New England and my dad’s from Sacramento, and I grew up near Sacramento myself. But they met, they crossed paths originally in Micronesia on an island called Panope. And their thought was that the word was derived from a Japanese term maybe, but they weren’t totally sure.

Yes, that’s exactly right. Anybody who grew up in Hawaii is probably listening to the show nodding along because azori is a Japanese word. And it basically means grass or straw footwear or sole. It’s a combination of two words. And it’s been in English since the 1820s. And it’s very common in Hawaii and among Pacific Islanders in general. Also called go-aheads. A lot of people know them as that.

So these are originally started out as flat footwear, open-backed, also called thongs sometimes. Not the underwear, just the footwear. And where you’ve got the big piece that goes between the big toe and the other toes. And it was borrowed from the grass or straw footwear to the rubber footwear once those became common.

Huh. That’s really interesting. I think it would be so cool if it took over flip-flop because I find flip-flops fun but a little dissatisfying.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I grew up calling them thongs. That was before the thong underwear became well-known. So I still occasionally will come out with that and get strange looks.

Yeah, and speaking of toes, do you ever wear them with socks?

I do, yeah. Sometimes. But just because my toes get really cold.

Okay, T-A-B-I. There’s a kind of Japanese sock called a tabi that actually fits around. How do you describe it? It’s got a pocket for the big toe. So it’s got one pocket for the big toe and then a separate pocket for all the other toes so that the thong part of the sandal or the footwear can go right in there with the sock. So you can wear tobbies with your zoris, I guess.

Tobbies with my zoris, like a man for my foot.

Yeah, exactly.

Dexter, one other interesting thing. Not only did English borrow the word zori from the Japanese, but the Japanese borrowed the word sandal from English. And so they borrowed it at sandaru, which refers to the Western style sandal with the closed back and buckles. So we’ve done a word swap there. Japanese to English and English to Japanese.

How about that? Sandaru.

That’s very peaceful to me.

Yeah, I just think that’s nice that the two languages recognized the need for the other word and said, can I borrow that?

Well, I appreciate that a lot. Vandals go to Japan and stories came to us from Japan. So that solves a mystery for me. I appreciate that.

Our pleasure. Thank you for calling and call us again sometime, all right?

Will do.

All right. Be well. Have a good day.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye, Dexter.

Well, if you have a linguistic mystery in your family, we’d love to help you try to solve it. 877-929-9673 or send your stories about language to words@waywordradio.org.