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[00:00] Uh, let's move on to America's fastest growing, most excellent segment in
[00:07] podcasts land, the under Googables.
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[00:44] If you're interested in that kind of jazz, it's what we do here is we try to answer a
[00:52] question without the use of Google, but then we Google in the end to figure out
[00:57] if we were right, but the fun of the games.
[00:59] I mean, I mean, we were right, but we just confirm it.
[01:02] Right.
[01:03] Right.
[01:03] Right.
[01:03] Exactly.
[01:04] Yeah.
[01:05] And so, okay.
[01:06] So oftentimes we do a word or phrase origins and I had a couple that
[01:11] popped into my head this week.
[01:12] I'm now blanking on the context of this one, but, uh, the concept of somebody
[01:19] being above board, like this was, uh, you know, this decision was above board
[01:26] or the, the way that this person behaved was above board.
[01:31] It was not below board.
[01:34] I don't think below board is a phrase.
[01:36] Well, I think maybe that's where I heard it is somebody was like jokingly
[01:39] saying below board.
[01:41] Yeah.
[01:43] Well, no.
[01:43] So can you give a definition of that, uh, Jason, how were your, your
[01:47] thoughts on what that phrase means?
[01:49] I mean, I think it's, uh, of a legit process.
[01:55] That's actually what it was.
[01:56] It was a work thing.
[01:57] And we were talking about ways to, uh, circumvent a thing.
[02:02] And he was like, no, but this is totally above board.
[02:04] Like this is legal.
[02:05] Like there's not any malfeasance or shenanigans yet involved
[02:11] with the way that we're doing this.
[02:12] This is above board.
[02:14] And I was just curious about what, how that came to be.
[02:19] What is the board and why is being above it good and being below it bad?
[02:27] Well, I don't know about, uh, you Harper, but the first thing I think of is,
[02:30] uh, um, ships, boats always connected this to, um, and why is that?
[02:42] I just tell, I'm just telling you what I've always thought of.
[02:46] I always thought of what happens underneath the boat stays shady.
[02:53] And what happens below deck stays below decks.
[02:56] Sure.
[02:56] Yeah, exactly.
[02:57] And if you're on deck, you sort of in the light of day and there's no way to sort
[03:02] of, everyone knows, yeah, the decisions that are being made are happening in
[03:07] front of the whole crew, where if you're below deck, but, but that doesn't really
[03:13] quite work because the phrase should be, this is above deck instead of above board.
[03:19] But I think of ships with, but yeah, so like if you throw somebody overboard,
[03:24] like there's, there's precedent for board being referenced to, uh, the deck or
[03:28] whatever, you don't throw them off the deck, even though that would be
[03:30] easier to say on some level, although it's strangely hard to say.
[03:34] It doesn't feel right.
[03:37] So that's how I've always perceived it.
[03:40] Uh, but I don't know if that's true.
[03:43] Jason, you were feeling a nautical theme there too.
[03:45] Yeah, I think for the same reasons that, uh, yeah, I don't know.
[03:51] Somehow the, the board is the thing that floats on the water or whatever.
[03:56] And if you're above it, you're good.
[03:59] And if you're below it, you're in trouble.
[04:02] Thanks.
[04:03] Good.
[04:03] Thanks.
[04:04] Interesting.
[04:06] So my thought on this was actually had to do with like board certification.
[04:11] Oh, okay.
[04:14] And that if you're above board, then you had passed muster, um, as an acceptable.
[04:22] You know, you've been certified, been certified, right?
[04:25] Sure.
[04:25] As a person or an organization.
[04:29] Um, but it makes a lot of sense.
[04:31] Yeah.
[04:32] But I feel like it's definitely wrong.
[04:34] Cause you know, if you're below, if you're below the board, yeah.
[04:38] If you haven't passed your tests or whatever, it's all sketchy and shady to
[04:43] be, are you board certified outside of the context of the medical profession?
[04:49] I feel like there was definitely like, like once we thought up
[04:51] meritocracy, like people got very busy making money, giving away
[04:57] certifications for a while, I think so.
[04:59] Yes.
[05:00] There were lots of words, probably.
[05:01] Yes.
[05:02] Yeah.
[05:03] Gotcha.
[05:05] With it, like a lawyer, it's like passing the bar.
[05:08] Would that be a board?
[05:09] Yeah.
[05:09] Yeah.
[05:10] Yeah.
[05:11] Above bar versus below bar.
[05:14] I've spent a lot of time below bar.
[05:16] I'll tell you what.
[05:17] Um, so if it's, uh, a certification thing, when do you think that would have come
[05:26] about like, and, uh, when are, when are we starting to certify things like, uh,
[05:32] the early 20th century?
[05:35] I think I would guess maybe, maybe the late 19th century is when
[05:39] we really want console with that.
[05:41] Sure.
[05:41] I mean, you could just say you were a doctor in the, you know, the mid 1800s.
[05:46] What you needed was one of those stripy poles, the barbershop has, and
[05:49] you can do whatever you want.
[05:52] It was a long time till you had to be certified, but I'm with you.
[05:56] I think we're good.
[05:59] I'm thinking like players use pro.
[06:02] I pulled a tooth once I cut some hair once I'm a doctor.
[06:04] Yeah.
[06:05] Give me some leeches.
[06:06] Let's go.
[06:10] Yeah.
[06:10] And I'm with you though.
[06:11] I think like turn of the century or like maybe slightly before turn of the
[06:14] centuries, like when professional, a lot of professional isms basically became
[06:19] codified, like, uh, professional schools came into being and stuff like that.
[06:25] Right.
[06:25] So that makes sense.
[06:28] And, uh, yeah, the other thing I thought, and I don't know why is that
[06:35] it could be a military thing.
[06:37] Like you're, because you have to be in certain physical condition or something
[06:42] like that, so you have to be above a certain, I guess in all of these things,
[06:47] we're saying that there's a cutoff.
[06:48] Right.
[06:48] Which makes sense to leap over a board or something that the way, if I can't jump
[06:54] over the board on below board, I don't know.
[06:56] But like in the military, there's like multiple factors.
[06:58] Kind of, you have to be physically fit and have all the, you know, other
[07:04] aptitudes to not crazy.
[07:07] Was there a board that was weapon they're about to give you?
[07:09] Right.
[07:10] Yeah.
[07:10] Was there a board that there was deciding whether you could go to war or not?
[07:13] Right.
[07:14] Perhaps.
[07:15] Yeah.
[07:15] Hmm.
[07:18] Yeah.
[07:19] That definitely wouldn't have been around before.
[07:21] World war one, I imagine, because before that, we did not
[07:26] care what kind of bodies we did not.
[07:28] Are you, do you want to shoot a gun for us?
[07:29] Sure.
[07:31] You're 10.
[07:32] Cool.
[07:33] You're a little old, but we'll let you.
[07:39] Um, yeah.
[07:40] So that actually, you know, some of this stuff does come from military.
[07:46] We haven't had a ton of it though.
[07:47] Like, I feel like I'm, I feel like this is horse racing somehow.
[07:51] Sure.
[07:51] You know, like, um, you know, horses jump over stuff and.
[07:57] Well, I'm just wondering whether like, you know, there's a, there's a lot of
[08:02] gambling on horses and I'm trying to figure out if like, if this is a
[08:06] gambling term, um, whether you're passing the money over the top of the
[08:11] desk or underneath some, yeah.
[08:13] Like, I don't, I don't know.
[08:15] I feel like gambling was just like fully illegal until fifties or
[08:22] sixties, you know what I mean?
[08:23] Like, it was just like a sin that people all just did, but it wasn't
[08:28] codified in any way.
[08:30] Could you, could you, maybe that's where it's coming from.
[08:32] The gambling is happening underneath a board of some sort where above
[08:37] board, you wouldn't gamble.
[08:39] You wouldn't, oh, you just wouldn't gamble at all.
[08:41] I see.
[08:42] Yeah.
[08:43] Like, is there a board that you would, you know, I don't know, I don't know.
[08:46] I'm just, I'm just, I'm just always this horse race.
[08:48] Have we ever done spitballing?
[08:49] We should probably do spitball.
[08:50] Yeah, we probably should do that.
[08:52] Uh, might be the next one.
[08:54] The only other context that I think of board is in the terms of, in
[08:58] terms of business or organizations, right.
[09:01] Where, you know, you have an outside board that approves what you're
[09:06] doing as a business or whatever.
[09:09] Right.
[09:11] I, I'm not sure if this would apply or anything like that, but I
[09:16] mean, you could imagine that it's, we're doing it in, it's, it's
[09:22] okay with the board.
[09:23] Yeah.
[09:23] Yeah.
[09:24] It's board approved.
[09:25] Right.
[09:27] As opposed to completely going rogue, which would be proud of the board.
[09:30] Right.
[09:31] Yeah, actually, that's probably the most obvious answer board approved.
[09:36] I'm still going with the boating, uh, ships, you know, medical
[09:42] things, maritime thing, and actually, uh, I'm going with, I don't
[09:48] know if I'm going to go pirates or slave shipping, you know, like, you
[09:53] know, like what's going on below decks.
[09:56] Uh, look, let's put me in the late 1500s, um, nautical era.
[10:04] Okay.
[10:06] I'm not, I think I'm on Harper's original intent now.
[10:09] I think it's board certified or board approved, something like that.
[10:17] Starting in the early 19th, early 20th century.
[10:25] Oh boy.
[10:27] I asked bard and bard says above board means honest and open.
[10:33] It originated in the 16th century.
[10:34] So Coalson pretty well nailed that in the world of gambling.
[10:41] So secondary nailing on that at the time dishonest players would often
[10:46] exchange unfavorable cards under the table so that others would
[10:50] see what was happening.
[10:51] So to play above board was to keep your cards above table
[10:54] level so that everyone could see them.
[10:56] I just, I assumed that back then, if you put your cards below the table,
[11:00] they would just immediately murder you dead.
[11:02] Yeah.
[11:02] You got shot.
[11:03] I just, that's how things worked in America.
[11:05] This is a British thing.
[11:08] That's according to Bart.
[11:09] So we'll find out what the real answer is now.
[11:11] So I, so word detective.com, which is a site I'm amazed.
[11:15] We haven't been to yet.
[11:16] Uh, it says similarly, uh, to play above board was to keep your
[11:22] cards above the level of the playing table.
[11:25] The board in the phrase, um, at the common, at the time was meant to
[11:31] use, it was mean meant table.
[11:34] Right.
[11:36] Um, and the term board room comes from that derivation as well.
[11:39] That the table room and the board of directors is, uh, somebody that sits
[11:45] around and probably board games.
[11:47] Mm-hmm.
[11:48] Uh, it was also extended to mean dining table.
[11:51] And the food found there, such as in the terminology room and board
[11:57] and boarding house.
[11:59] Oh, hell.
[12:02] We're learning all types of stuff.
[12:04] It's what in the same hell, uh, board is yeah.
[12:08] So board is a table and it's, it's created all these things for us.
[12:14] The first known figurative use 1599.
[12:18] Oh, nailed timeline.
[12:21] And also mentioned gambling at one point.
[12:23] So I think I get all the points.
[12:26] Uh, yeah.
[12:28] Well, what is this on some dictionary 1610 said by Johnson.
[12:33] This is poorly cited though.
[12:36] Well, this is poorly spelled.
[12:38] He plays a board, a boardly and, uh, I think above has a U instead of a V
[12:45] and a board is two O's.
[12:46] So yeah, well, nice job.
[12:51] All right.
[12:51] I thought we nailed it.
[12:53] Nice job, buddy.
[12:54] That's why you come to us.
[12:56] That's right.
[12:57] Uh, spitball anybody.
[13:00] Uh, I got to call it a night personally, but fair enough.
[13:05] Oh, for next, next show, teaser, teaser, don't Google it.
[13:10] Just sit on your hands and wait, sit and wait until two weeks
[13:15] from now, you get the answer.
[13:17] That's right.
[13:17] All right.
[13:18] Until then, thank you for listening, fans.
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[13:53] And just a reminder, all this is above board.
[13:57] Yeah, for the architect, Donny Walsh and our once and always Hall of Fame
[14:04] coach, Bobby Ciclunnerd, no comments, no comment, no notes.
[14:34] No notes.
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