Saucered and blowed is an idiom meaning that a project is finished or preparations are complete, but it’s not that odd—Bill Clinton’s used it. It derives from the rustic practice of spilling boiling-hot coffee into a saucer and blowing on it to cool it down. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “”Saucered and Blowed” Idiom”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi.
Hi, who’s this?
My name is Bill Dowling. I live in Moortown, Vermont. I grew up in the Boston area. My father, who’s now 93, occasionally would use the expression saucered and blowed. It was usually at the end of some lengthy process that he wanted to announce was finished. Let’s say the kids are going out to the school bus and they have to get their snowsuits on and they have to get their breakfast and they get their lunch money. And, you know, my mother would say, you know, are they ready? And he’d say, yep, they’re all saucer and blowed.
And with some questioning, it turns out this was an expression of his Uncle Pat, who was a chicken farmer from the suburbs of Boston. And people used to saucer and blow their beverages in their soup.
Yeah, absolutely.
Right. Or their coffee. He used the example of somebody enjoying their cup of coffee, and somebody else would say, gee, I’d love a cup, but I’m in a hurry. And they say, well, you can have mine. It’s already saucered and blowed. But I really can’t use it without people thinking I’m kind of, you know, odd.
Are you?
Yes.
Own it. Own it, baby. Own it. You are perceptive. We are going to connect you to a larger world of people who use this term.
Yeah, yeah. There’s a long tradition of it. And it’s exactly what you said. It’s that tradition of, it’s sort of a rustic tradition, particularly with boiled coffee or boiled tea, that you cool it off by pouring out a little bit into your saucer and slurping it up from there. That was, at one time in this country, considered perfectly hospitable in rustic areas at least.
My grandma, Winnie, used to do that with grapefruit juice, actually.
But it doesn’t need to be cooled.
No, no, but she didn’t think anything of eating half a grapefruit and then squeezing it out onto the saucer and slurping it up.
Yeah, okay.
Yeah. So the whole idea is you get larger surface area on the saucer. It’s a thin layer of hot liquid that cools really fast, and then you can drink it without having to wait for the whole cup to cool, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Bill, would it make you feel any better to know that Bill Clinton has used that expression?
A lot better.
Oh, he has.
Oh, yes, yes, yes. He actually used it years ago. I remember reading an account that included a description of an election that he knew he was going to lose, and he described it as being all saucered and blowed already. There was a writer named Harry Marlin who wrote for the Brownsworth Bulletin in Central Texas who wrote about this in one of his newspaper columns. And he has this great line where he says, drinking coffee from a saucer involved a lot of slurping, which the older men had developed a knack for. I never seemed to get the hang of it. I could drink water out of a stock tank without getting my elbows muddy, but the coffee slurping had me stymied.
And that’s how I think about it. It’s a particular type of, it’s a place in time, rural, rusted, maybe the cowboy tradition. I don’t even know, right?
Yeah. But we do find mentions of people slurping their coffee this way or their tea back into at least the 1850s. But there was no harm in it. It wasn’t considered crass or vulgar.
Oh, exactly. That’s just what you did.
Yeah. There’s some story attributed to George Washington referring to that practice.
Yeah. I do like, one thing I like about this term, Bill, is the fact that we’ve turned the noun saucer into a verb. We’ve saucered and bloat. And also bloat is a little, like, non-standard of the past. But it’s really separated from its original metaphor. Saucered and bloat.
Yeah. How are you feeling now, Bill?
Way better.
Not so lonesome?
I’ve yet to find anybody who responds. You know, if I use it, you know, to anybody except my family members, they think I’m speaking some foreign language. But, yeah, the Bill Clinton connection is definitely a validation.
Well, being a role model for others is always a lonesome job, Bill. Thanks for your call. Really appreciate it. I’m sure you’ve helped, Bill. Thank you.
All right. Take care now.
All right. Bye-bye.
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