A middle school teacher in Flower Mound, Texas, responds to students’ protests and excuses with if all our buts were candied nuts, we’d all be fat for Christmas. It’s probably a variation of a phrase popularized by former Dallas Cowboys star turned sports commentator Dandy Don Meredith, who often observed, “If ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ were candy and nuts, wouldn’t it be a merry Christmas?” The practice of using ifs and buts as nouns goes back at least 900 years. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Ifs and Buts and Candied Nuts”
Hi, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Haley Stout, and I’m calling from Flower Mound, Texas.
Welcome to the show. How can we help?
Well, I had a phrase that I’ve been curious about for some years, and I understand what it means, like the context that my son’s teacher used it in. But I was just wondering about the origin of it or where this phrase comes from.
And she was my son’s middle school teacher. She was an older lady. And when the kids would ask a question or she would ask a question and they would say, but, but I don’t, or but I can’t do, she would always say to them this phrase. She would say, if all our butts were candied nuts, we’d all be fat for Christmas.
And it’s just kind of a funny phrase. And I was just thinking about it the other day and then was listening to your program. And I thought, well, I’m going to call in and see if they know anything about this.
So the story is that a kid or somebody will say, oh, but I can’t do it. And then the adult says, if all our butts were candied nuts, we’d all be fat for Christmas. So it’s just the way of saying, like, enough with your butts, just get on with it.
Yes, it was my son’s middle school teacher. And was that there in Texas? Yes, in Flower Mound. In Flower Mound, okay.
Do you know if they happen to be a Cowboys fan? I do not know if she was. You know why I ask is because this phrase, as far as I know, in this particular form, was coined by Dandy Don Meredith, who played for the Cowboys for years and then went on to be a commentator for Monday Night Football.
No kidding. Yeah, so the first uses that we can find of this phrase in print in a variety of different formats are from 1970. They’re always attributed to Dandy Don for like year after year. He apparently was a pet phrase of his for quite a while. And his version was, if if and buts were candy and nuts, what a Merry Christmas we would have.
Okay. But he said it a few other ways. But what’s really interesting about this, he’s plugging in to a larger tradition in English that goes back eight or nine hundred years to using ifs, buts, and ands as plural nouns kind of in a series or it’s all together to kind of collectively refer to doubts about a situation, say, in a political situation.
Situations, you know, if the ifs and ors get their way, then we’re going to lose this election. Or if the ands and the buts were anything serious, then the ballgame would have gone another direction. So it’s really, really interesting that he’s touched on to a larger tradition of using these conjunctions as nouns, which they’re not really nouns. And again and again, when he was describing a football game, somebody like, you know, if that pass had just made it three more yards, and he’d be like, yeah, well, you know, if ifs were candy, then we’d have a great Christmas.
Right. And yeah, I think this is just kind of her way of kind of keeping the kids going or keeping control or, you know, keeping them engaged or whatever. She just, you know, didn’t want to really hear the excuses.
Well, do you know the other, there’s a more common kind of way, probably a lot of people are thinking about… If Wishes Were Horses. If Wishes Were Horses. Do you know that one, Hayley? I don’t know that one. Well, if somebody says, I wish I didn’t have to do this and somebody else says, if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride. And that’s a very common one in English.
Okay. Yeah. I’ve heard very, I guess variations of kind of the wishes one but not the one with horses. But they’re always about we’ve got this doubt or we’ve got this feeling that whatever’s happened could have gone a different way if only conditions have been different. And obviously we’d have no time machine to do that.
Well, that’s very interesting. Yeah, sure. Thanks so much for calling. Our pleasure. All right.
Well, thanks a lot. We love listening to you guys. Bye-bye. Take care. Bye-bye. Well, we know there’s something that’s said in your house. You’ve had the question in your mind for quite a while. Now’s the time to call us, and we’re going to help you solve it.
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