Era of Exposed Ankles

[00:00] All right, I think it's time for another segment of The Undegoogleables.
[00:11] Oh, we doing Undegoogleables. That was the play. I'm super excited.
[00:16] I told us we had to.
[00:19] We signed up for it. In the end, it's going to be better and more true than Google can give you.
[00:29] Jason, what do you got for us this week?
[00:32] Well, we got a special Undegoogleables for new fans of the show.
[00:37] We're now on Dash Radio, so shout out to Dash Radio.
[00:41] What we do is we do a segment where listeners tweet in a question that they may have Googled.
[00:50] You know, you're at a bar and you are having a bar conversation.
[00:54] You come up with a phrase or whatever. What does this mean kind of thing?
[00:58] You would have Googled it. Instead of Googling it, what we want you to do is send it into us
[01:04] and then we will act like Google. We'll just use our collective brain power,
[01:08] because we're all smart guys, to deduce what the answer is.
[01:16] What we do is we double check our clearly accurate deduction with Google and tell you
[01:22] the actual answer. This week, our submission comes in from a person near and dear to my heart,
[01:29] my sister, Erin Triplett. A quick sidebar shout out to, she has a podcast called
[01:37] Falling in Love with Trippin' Brick. If you're a fan of romantic comedies, subscribe to that.
[01:44] But her question, I'm guessing related to romantic comedies, is where does the phrase
[01:52] is having a crush originate from? You guys have any thoughts on this? Her guess is falconry,
[02:02] which is where most phrases come from. Yeah, I was thinking it was probably middle ages.
[02:07] You know, you have a crush on a guy or a gal and you're royalty and it's not reciprocated,
[02:13] so you crush them with a big rock. I think that much is clear.
[02:19] But we're more civil these days, so the crushy survives.
[02:24] Generally. Well, most of the time.
[02:28] I was thinking like, you know, all of us, you know, we're like a beer or two here and there,
[02:35] and you know, you finish it up and you just crush the beer can and throw it away. But we love our
[02:41] beer, so we crush them. I think that's a different meaning with a crush. Okay, okay.
[02:47] I was thinking that the the so one one has a crush on someone else, but often those are unrequited.
[02:59] So you really like someone, but they don't like you back. So you are crushed.
[03:04] Internally. So it's not low to you. So this is not falconry. It's probably Shakespeare.
[03:10] It's definitely Shakespeare. For sure. Are there any other ways in which this could have
[03:17] originated? Like, is this when do we think so? Okay, so we think it's Shakespeare. Is there a chance
[03:22] that it originated later than that? Like, like, was this like a flapper term or something like that?
[03:29] In the 20s. It seems like a yeah, I mean, it could usually be like a 50s thing.
[03:40] Okay, I think this has to do with maybe the era of exposed ankles.
[03:45] Yeah. So you think, Jason, that it might be the crush, like a crush is
[03:54] basically an unrequited feeling and you feel bad afterwards. Right. You're crushed. Okay.
[04:01] I like that. Did we do we like that? And we think it's Shakespeare. We think it's
[04:05] it's either Shakespeare or the 1950s. Yeah.
[04:07] But potentially, potentially like a David Bowie song. I'm not sure.
[04:20] Okay, according to English Stack Exchange, the romantic sense of crush was first recorded
[04:28] in the 1884 journal of Isabella Maud written house crush might have been a variation on mash.
[04:35] Since by 1870, mashed was a popular way of saying flirtatious or head over heels in love.
[04:42] And to crush something was to mash it. Interesting. According to phrases.org.uk.
[04:53] Uh, the euphemism originated in the United States as a slang term about 1914.
[04:58] So I was not far off with my flapper's guess. It was institutionalized by the popular song
[05:05] of the 20s written by the Gershwin's. George and I read that is in case you were confused,
[05:10] which current I've got a crush on you, sweetie pie. So, so what do we think?
[05:21] Those are widely varying accounts of the origin of the phrase.
[05:24] I don't know, it seems, it seems like maybe that was one of those terms that probably ran
[05:32] around and slang for a long time before it was really ever codified anywhere usefully. So
[05:38] I probably like the one that you brought up earlier, the article a little bit later in that
[05:43] one. They described mash as a regarded as a spoon fed diet. It's supposed to be feed somebody
[05:52] but, um, but they, they also, uh, called it drew a link to the word spoony. And if you were
[05:58] spooning on someone, um, since the 1820s meant to be foolishly or a sentimentally amorous. Um,
[06:07] but I liked that. I liked that, uh, you know, you might be able to be spooning on somebody.
[06:11] Yeah, for sure. I'm going to, we're bringing it back.
[06:14] Yeah. So here's a third one. So, uh, according to etim online, uh,
[06:27] there was a term, an older usage of crush, which is now obsolete for a social gathering,
[06:33] such as a dance or reception. I fell in with her at Lady Gray's crush from a 18, a letter in 1832.
[06:43] Maybe it's all those things that was kind of an under Google. Yeah, it kind of was.
[06:49] It's still, it's still baffles me. Like that we are, that there's so many phrases that all of us
[06:54] use that we have no idea what the origins are. Uh, and they don't make sense when you
[06:59] speak about them literally. Well, whatever, like 90% of the crap I use in a day, I would have no
[07:05] ability to say how it works or how to build one. So that's fair fact that my language
[07:10] is also like that is not that surprising to me. Somebody asked me to build a laptop tomorrow.
[07:15] I just, yeah, I just lie down the floor in a fetal position.
[07:22] Well, we've all been there this playoff season. Save that for sure.