Ham-and-Egger

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Richard Harris. I’m a neighbor of Martha’s up in Hillcrest, San Diego.

Oh, nice.

Oh, hi, Richard.

Well, then you’re not far from me either. I live in University Heights.

Yeah.

Nice to meet you, neighbor.

Good.

What’s up? What’s on your mind?

Well, my wife’s siblings recall that their father using a term when he was doing some tasks around the house that were not up to his typical standards or failed. It would be, oh, it’s a ham and egger job. That was in Meriden, Connecticut, 20 miles from New Haven.

My brother-in-law, who was raised in Manhattan, recalls the same thing from an uncle of his, who’d use it the same way as above. And then my brother-in-law also recalls his father-in-law, who lived in Baltimore, using the term. And we can’t find any origins of it.

Well, I’ve got some stuff for you.

It comes out of boxing where it basically means a palooka, the guy who’s just, you know, he’s not a great boxer. He doesn’t have this fight in him, so to speak.

He’s kind of working for food, you know, and that’s where the ham and egg come into play. He’s not looking to make bank.

He’s simply willing to just go fight, you know, one more day, day after day.

Okay.

He plugs away.

He’s a plotter, you know.

And we find it as far back as 1918. There’s a really interesting usage of it in a Navy journal, U.S. Navy journal, where they’re talking about a guy who’s passed on.

And he was one of these guys who used to go to these kind of informal bouts where the Navy guys, the sailors, would go test themselves against each other in a ring just to see who would win.

And they say he was known as a Friday nighter, a Hammond egger, a curtain raiser, a ring warmer.

And you can get from all of these kind of this sense that, all right, we’ve got to have a card. I’ve got a boxer here with nobody to pair him with.

All right, who’s the next palooka in line?

Just so you can have a bout, you know, just get a guy in there.

And maybe he makes a few bucks for beer or somebody buys him dinner, and that’s his payment for the night.

He’s done.

And so over time it was extended to refer to anybody who’s just kind of like putting in time but not really committed to the work and maybe even half-assing it as a result.

Very interesting.

Thank you.

Thanks so much.

Really appreciate it.

Thanks, Richard.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Yeah, by the 1930s, it had already started to leave boxing and become more generic for an amateur or a second reader.

-huh.

I never hear it now.

No, no.

It’s a classic.

I bet the next boxing movie I watch, it’ll probably leap out at me now.

I’ll totally see it in there because they will have pillaged all the boxing glossaries and thrown the language in there for color.

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