Hold ’Er Newt

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Kate from Indianapolis.

Hi, Kate.

Hi, Kate. Welcome to the program.

Welcome.

Thanks. Well, a friend of mine and I and her kids were all sitting around one evening talking about my friend’s mother.

And funny things she used to say having to do with cars.

They were swapping stories about how it was to learn how to drive out in the country.

And one of the things that their grandmother used to say was, “Holder Newt, we’re going round the corner.”

And so we got to wondering where that came from, and none of the kids, nor my friend, knew.

Now, I do know that the woman who would say this, she was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1922.

But she’d also lived in eastern New York State for a while.

So we were wondering if maybe it had come from out there.

So if the car was going around the corner, say, fast, she wanted to tell the driver to be careful, she’d say, “Hold on, hoot?”

No, she was more of a really adventuresome, and it was more of one of those, you know, giddy up.

Oh, really?

Yeah, she said it gleefully.

Oh, oh, sort of like, floor it.

Oh, she sounds like a lot of fun.

She’s just a hoot.

1922. She was born in 1922, huh?

Mm—

Interesting.

A little work has been done by some of our predecessors in the world of language.

Eric Partridge, who was a famous slang lexicographer, put a little entry for it in one of his books called The Dictionary of Catchphrases.

And he traces it back as far as 1922, which is interesting.

It’s very interesting, a coincidence in those dates.

Yeah.

And suggests the newt isn’t a person’s name exactly, but perhaps it’s related to an old-fashioned slang word for adult or an idiot.

So it’s basically, hang on, doofus.

Giddy up, doofus.

And now I can take it back a little bit further than Eric Partridge did.

There’s a book of World War I stories written by a guy who was in the army.

It’s published in 1919, where he mentions that in 1917, that was one of the phrases that he learned.

Hold on, hold or newt.

I don’t know that that’s the origin of it, but certainly the World War I was an incredible period for language expansion because you’ve got people from all across the country meeting each other in the boot camps and on the battlefield and all the different centers of the population, the military centers.

And not only that, but the civilian population was moving to the cities as well.

They were congregating in the places, you know, wives and kids would move in with the grandparents or people would go, the kids were sent to the country to live with the aunts and uncles, that sort of thing.

So a lot of language swapped hands at that time.

So I would not be surprised if 1917 or World War I in general was the popularization period for this.

And what’s really interesting is it appears in songs in the 1930s and 40s.

It appears in songs in the 1950s.

It shows up in movies and newspapers.

But, yeah, it had a long life, and just I guess it was about the time that horses stopped being a common thing and cars started taking over that people stopped using because it was always about reining in a horse.

Definitely.

Kate, there are lots of different examples of it, too, like hold her newt, don’t let her rear, or hold her newt, she’s heading for the rhubarb, or she’s heading for the barn.

Or heading for the pea patch.

Yeah, heading for the pea patch.

She’s heading for the timber.

So it’s like hold those reins as tight as you can.

Kate, I’m loving how she transferred that from horses to cars.

You know, there’s that moment that Grant was describing in history.

Well, Kate, she sounds like a lot of fun.

We appreciate you sharing those stories.

Well, you’re welcome.

Thank you, Kate.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Well, if you remember a phrase from Grandma or Grandpa and want to share it with us, call us 877-929-9673 or send it an email to words@waywordradio.org.

We love these linguistic heirlooms.