Megan from Billings, Montana, asks what to call the foam sleeve that slips over a can: cozy, koozie, coozy, kozy, or another spelling. The word traces back to tea cozy, the knitted or padded cover that keeps a teapot warm, traditionally pronounced with a long “o.” By the late 1970s and early 1980s, inventors and companies were patenting can holders under many altered spellings, including the brand name Koozie. Those commercial spellings helped spread both the double-o pronunciation and the many competing forms still heard today. This is part of a complete episode.
Hi, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, my name is Megan. I’m calling from Billings, Montana.
Hello, Megan.
Hi, Megan. What’s up?
My husband and I have been married for 10 years, and we constantly argue about the little foam thing that you can put around a soda or beer can.
Constantly?
Yeah, constantly. It comes up more often than it should.
You drink a lot of beer, do you?
No, but every time we go have any gatherings with his friends, they offer me a drink.
And do you want a koozie with that?
And I look at them and their backwards Wyoming ways and say, don’t you mean a cozy?
And they say, no, they’re koozies.
And they look at me indulgently because I’m a Montanan.
And I obviously don’t know what I’m talking about because we don’t drink beer the way Wyoming is drink beer.
What do you use, a straw or something?
How differently can you drink beer?
I have no idea.
Apparently just using koozies versus cozies.
Heathens.
So anyway, you would be settling a long-term argument if it was cozy versus cozy.
Do you really want it settled?
Only if I get my way.
I ask because my wife had been arguing about whether or not dill pickles and bread and butter pickles are better since we got married nine years ago.
And, you know, I don’t really ever, I always want that to be our argument.
You don’t want to let go of that.
Yeah, because otherwise we might argue about something more serious.
We have other nonsense arguments that we can have.
Yeah, okay.
But we’ll also help with his friends because they think I’m a silly Montana.
They gang up on you.
We can help.
I don’t know if it’s exactly the help that you need.
Here’s the thing.
You know what a tea cozy is?
Yes.
Okay, so this is a little probably crochet or knitted thing that goes on top of the teapot to keep the tea warm.
In between pouring yourself cups.
This is where the idea of the drink cozy came from.
And the drink cozy kind of popped up in the 1970s.
We see real strong evidence of in the late 1970s.
And by 1980, we started to see a wide variety of patents appearing for a variety of different kinds of cozies.
Now, the difficulty with this is, is that in order to differentiate themselves and to get patents approved, they each came up with their own different kind of innovations.
This one has a zipper.
This one folds.
This one’s made out of a different kind of material.
And importantly for our conversation here, they would usually use a different name.
Usually it was the same word with a different spelling.
So you will find in 1980 a Koozie, K-O-O-Z-I-E, patented.
And you will find Cozy, K-O-Z-Y, and you’ll find a wide variety with double O’s or single O’s with K or C, S or Z, a whole ton of these spellings.
And so what we have here is the same word with different spellings, and probably Koozie started exclusively as a brand name, as a patented brand name for a product that you could buy at the store.
Kind of using, like, band-aids instead of saying, like, a plastic gauze.
Yeah.
Adhesive bandage or something.
Yeah, something like that.
But the gist of it is you are both talking about the same device.
You’re actually using the same name with different spellings and different pronunciations simply because these businesses wanted to do that.
But the original form is cozy.
That’s kind of the thing about this debate.
It’s not really why have a debate about this because it’s the same word with different pronunciations and spellings.
It doesn’t matter.
Very true.
And I will bring that up the next time we have a gathering with his friends and they look at me like I’m crazy.
I’ll just say it started out as a cozy.
You guys are just using a brand name Koozie.
Yeah.
That’s a good summary.
And in my thinking, if you prefer a brand name over the generic name, then you’re probably like have suckered for some kind of commercial intent.
Exactly.
Megan, so you’ve got to report back to us.
Tell us how this goes down.
We’ve loaded you up with some information here.
The gist of it is either one is fine.
Cozy is the original.
Take your pick, and people should just lay off.
I’m ready to go educate my Wyoming friends with my traditional Montana linguistics.
Oh, boy.
Educate. Do let us know how that goes, okay?
Original and authentic.
I will. Thank you guys so much.
All right. Thanks for calling.
Thank you very much.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
We’d love to argue with you.
Email words@waywordradio.org.
