What’s the Origin of the Word “Kazoo”?

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Patrick from beautiful Bolton Landing on Lake George in the Adirondack Park in upstate New York.

Oh my goodness, you sound like you’re in a very lovely place.

I am. I recently had the pleasure of visiting America’s only plastic kazoo factory. It’s in Beaufort, South Carolina. I think that’s how they pronounce it. D-E-A-U-F-O-R-T, South Carolina.

Wow.

And it was lovely. They had a little museum. They had a factory tour, a little gift shop. It was a lovely afternoon.

But they had a little documentary film before the tour started. And they kind of just glossed over where the word kazoo even came from. So I talked to the tour guide after the tour. And I said, nobody knows where kazoo came from. And she goes, no, we don’t know, and no one knows. And I was just a little surprised by that. And I was like, you know what? I’m going to find out where kazoo came from because I have some friends that are going to help me out. No pressure or anything.

Sit down, Patrick. I’ve got some bad news.

Nobody knows.

Nobody knows?

Nobody knows.

Really?

No, there’s guesses. There’s theories. There’s surmise. It’s all rubbish to be ignored. Nobody really knows.

We know when the kazoo first appeared. We know that sometimes it was called the gazoo with a G instead of a K. We know that there was another instrument that preceded it that was very similar. Instead, it played straight out of the mouth like you smoke a cigar. It was played to the side like a flute. This was called a eunuch flute or a merletone, a very similar instrument. It sounded very much the same, and that’s from much older than that.

And we also know that there were a bunch of slang words from the 1800s, about the time that the kazoo appears, that sound a lot like that word, including gazook, gazabo, gazebo, and gazoo. And they all just kind of mean dumb person or stupid person.

Oh.

And it’s possible when you blow a kazoo that you sound dumb.

Well, it does kind of have a little onomatopoeia going on there, right? I mean, the word sounds like kazoo, you know.

That’s what all the dictionaries that I can find say. They basically suggest. They don’t say for sure, but they suggest that it’s onomatopoeic. But that’s the most that’s known about it. I’m sorry to say, most words have that story. Most words that are not obviously from Latin and Greek have unknown origins.

Do we know when it first appeared in print or anything? I mean, how could I kind of run this down on my own?

If you only have a minute, check the Oxford English Dictionary, which you can sometimes get free access to through your libraries. If you have a half hour, an hour, go to one of the digital newspaper sites like newspaper.com, newspapers.com or newspaperarchive.com.

Oh, okay.

And see how far back you can find it. You will probably not be able to find older uses than the Oxford English Dictionary has. But that’s the short version.

Okay.

Well, I certainly appreciate it. It was a pleasure speaking with you.

Great talking with you, too, Patrick. I have to ask, did you come away with a collection of kazoos or a special kazoo?

Well, it was love at first sight when I saw the electric kazoo. They had a kazoo with a little pickup attached to it that I can plug into my amp here and go wild with the distortion and everything.

Are you serious?

Have a ball with that.

Yeah, yeah.

Outstanding.

Oh, I want to hear that. I desperately want to hear that. You have to send me an audio file of that.

I will.

I will.

Please do.

Yeah, that would be great.

I will.

Thank you, Patrick. I had no idea. Kazoo with a pickup. Who knew?

Who knew, right? As soon as I saw it, it’s like, I have to have that. I feel a rap coming on.

Don’t.

No raps, Martha.

Patrick, thank you so much for calling.

Okay, thank you.

Bye.

All righty, bye-bye.

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