A grandmother in Ferndale, California, wonders about a phrase her own grandmother used. If one of the grandchildren walked into a room and joined a conversation already taking place, she’d exclaim, “Oh! Another country heard from!” Although her grandmother used the expression affectionately, traditionally, it’s had a more dismissive sense. It derives from an older expression, another county heard from, a reference to the days when election results could take days or even weeks to come in. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Origin and Meaning of “Another Country Heard From””
Welcome to A Way with Words.
Good morning.
Good morning. Who is this?
This is Lynn McCullough from Ferndale, California.
Hi, Lynn. Welcome to the show.
Hi, Lynn.
Hi. It’s great to be on. I love your show.
Thank you. We’re glad to have you.
Thanks.
What’s up?
Well, I’m a grandmother and have been for the past 10 years, and somehow or another that brings back, I guess, things of my own grandmother. And it came to my mind that she would say when one of us walked in the room and started out on a conversation that was already taking place, she’d say, oh, another country heard from. And I never heard anyone else say it, and I didn’t think about it for a long time, and then I started sharing things like that with my grandkids.
Nice.
And I just wondered who else says that.
-huh. And so what was the sense of that phrase when she used it?
Well, you didn’t feel badly. You just felt like, kind of recognized, I thought.
Oh, I see.
Oh, it wasn’t dismissive. It wasn’t like, who asked you? Why are you talking?
No, because she wasn’t like that. No, it was fun. It was like, oh, another country heard from.
Oh.
Yeah, no, it wasn’t. She was not grumpy.
Oh, that’s really sweet.
You know, the context I’ve heard that in more often is when a baby cries. You know, like you have a group of people there, and all of a sudden the baby pipes up and says something, and somebody, I mean, the baby doesn’t say something. The baby makes a sound. And somebody will say, oh, another country heard from. You know, it made us feel like we were a country that she wanted to hear from.
Oh, nice.
Oh, that’s adorable.
Yeah, that’s great.
I asked about the negative interpretation because traditionally it has been kind of a smart remark. Traditionally it was the kind of thing where you might say, oh, everybody’s got an opinion, you too. Or there are meaner ways to say that, but kind of a way of ridiculing somebody who pipes up when their voice isn’t wanted or their ideas don’t need to be heard.
Yeah, I can imagine that.
And you just used the term piping up or piping in. She would have used that as well.
I see.
There we go.
Interesting.
Yeah.
And what’s cool about this phrase is that there’s an earlier version of it, which is another county heard from. Another country heard from is a corruption of that. And that goes back to the old days when we didn’t have instant election results. We didn’t see the results of, say, a presidential election in real time or the same night of polling. It was weeks and weeks and weeks. And back in the day, in the 19th century, people would say another county heard from, or newspapers would announce, another county heard from. You know, the election results are still coming in slowly, slowly, slowly because you don’t have the same kind of media that you do today.
Oh, interesting.
Yeah, and there’s a story that word historians have talked about for a long time.
Yeah, the 1876 election of Rutherford B. Hayes.
Rutherford B. Hayes.
I think I’m a distant relative of his.
You are?
I think I am.
Wow.
And Samuel Tilden. It was a close-fought election. And even down to the wire, nobody knew who was really going to win it. And the results kept coming in from all these different counties from across the country and kind of pushing it one way or the other. And so you would get these subject lines of these little paragraphs or even whole stories in the newspaper that would say another county heard from. However, that term another county heard from was used previously to that election. So although the story kind of connects it to that one contentious election, you can find it as far back as 1868. And it shows up in advertisements and letters to the editor and a lot of things that don’t really have anything to do with politics. And it’s pretty clear, at least to my word historian’s eyes, that the way that this is presented, another account you heard from, often in quotes, often as if it’s special or it needs some attention drawn to it. It’s clear that they’re referring to something else outside of the newspaper, but I don’t know what the source is. So maybe there was a play or some kind of a performance speech that was given at the time or there was a joke making the rounds. But in any case, another county heard from was the thing you would say. Say a lot of people were down at the pub or the bar discussing the events of the day and somebody, just like you described, jumps into the conversation. You might put him down and say, another county heard from, and just ignore their advice or ignore their thoughts.
Oh, interesting.
So it had that more of a negative when someone spoke up.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, so Lynn, a lot of history behind your grandmother’s saying.
Cool.
Cool.
Thank you for such an interesting question.
We really appreciate it.
All right.
Well, thanks for your show, and I’ll keep listening.
Take care now.
Thank you, Lynn.
All right.
You too.
Bye-bye.
Call us 877-929-9673 or send us an email. That address is words@waywordradio.org.
