WEBVTT - Why Do We Call Dibs and Shotgun, and Who Was the Real McCoy? 0:00:01.890 --> 0:00:07.910 Welcome to BrainStuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, BrainStuff. Lauren 0:00:07.930 --> 0:00:12.930 Vogelbaum here. The English language is full of phrases that 0:00:12.970 --> 0:00:17.119 we casually throw into conversations, often without any idea of 0:00:17.180 --> 0:00:21.240 what they really mean or how they originated. For example, 0:00:21.460 --> 0:00:25.860 have you ever called dibs or called shotgun? What's a dib? 0:00:26.460 --> 0:00:28.760 Are there going to be weapons involved on this grocery run? 0:00:29.900 --> 0:00:32.040 We'll get to those in a minute, but here's another one. 0:00:32.740 --> 0:00:36.390 Have you ever heard something or someone called the real McCoy? 0:00:37.590 --> 0:00:39.809 We use this phrase when referring to something that's the 0:00:39.850 --> 0:00:43.830 real deal, the genuine article. But just who was the 0:00:43.850 --> 0:00:47.770 real McCoy? This is a case where no one is 0:00:47.870 --> 0:00:50.959 actually sure how the phrase originated. There are a few 0:00:51.040 --> 0:00:54.700 stories told here in North America about the probable McCoy 0:00:54.780 --> 0:00:58.370 in question. The first has to do with an American 0:00:58.490 --> 0:01:01.560 middleweight boxer and actor from the turn of the 1900s. 0:01:02.180 --> 0:01:05.020 His given name was Norman Selby, but he performed under 0:01:05.040 --> 0:01:08.360 the name Kid McCoy and was fairly famous in his day. 0:01:09.700 --> 0:01:14.080 The almost certainly apocryphal story goes that Selby was challenged 0:01:14.120 --> 0:01:15.930 in a bar by a man who had had a 0:01:15.950 --> 0:01:18.830 bit too much and questioned whether he was really the 0:01:19.069 --> 0:01:23.990 legendary fighter he claimed to be. In response, Selby socked him, 0:01:24.350 --> 0:01:26.990 and when the man clambered back to his feet, he 0:01:27.030 --> 0:01:30.169 announced that he was convinced that this was, indeed, the 0:01:30.209 --> 0:01:34.649 real McCoy. Another tale goes that sportswriters gave Selby the 0:01:34.690 --> 0:01:37.880 moniker because he was accused of throwing so many fights 0:01:38.190 --> 0:01:41.450 that they never knew which version of Selby, the earnest 0:01:41.530 --> 0:01:44.399 fighter or the fight thrower, would show up at a match. 0:01:45.700 --> 0:01:49.160 The second branch of stories concerns a Canadian-American inventor by 0:01:49.180 --> 0:01:52.770 the name of Elijah McCoy. McCoy was a black man, 0:01:52.990 --> 0:01:55.860 the son of enslaved parents who had liberated themselves through 0:01:55.880 --> 0:01:59.500 the Underground Railroad, who had a serious mind for engineering 0:01:59.820 --> 0:02:03.900 and would patent over 50 innovations in his lifetime. One 0:02:03.940 --> 0:02:07.650 of those, in 1872, was for an automated oil cup 0:02:07.730 --> 0:02:11.350 for steam engine locomotives. It was a big deal because 0:02:11.389 --> 0:02:14.530 it kept the train's axles and bearings lubricated while it 0:02:14.570 --> 0:02:17.839 was in motion. meaning trains didn't need to stop for 0:02:17.900 --> 0:02:21.980 service so often, meaning they could operate more quickly and safely. 0:02:23.340 --> 0:02:26.040 So the story here goes that the success of his 0:02:26.100 --> 0:02:31.870 invention spawned imitations, but savvy railroad inspectors and or engineers 0:02:32.310 --> 0:02:35.410 knew that McCoy's model was the best, and thus would 0:02:35.530 --> 0:02:40.070 ask for the real McCoy. The third branch of stories 0:02:40.150 --> 0:02:44.690 comes from the Prohibition era from 1920s America. Legend has 0:02:44.750 --> 0:02:47.680 it that a Florida rum runner named Bill McCoy was 0:02:47.800 --> 0:02:50.740 known for selling the good stuff, that he didn't water 0:02:50.780 --> 0:02:54.480 down or otherwise adulterate his booze to inflate his profits. 0:02:55.540 --> 0:02:58.540 So when his customers wanted the best rum, they may 0:02:58.560 --> 0:03:02.750 have requested it by name. These are all great stories, 0:03:02.910 --> 0:03:05.150 but one of the problems with all of them is 0:03:05.169 --> 0:03:10.170 that the phrase Real McCoy existed as such by 1881, 0:03:10.169 --> 0:03:13.300 predating all but the Elijah McCoy story by at least 0:03:13.340 --> 0:03:16.260 a decade. Kid McCoy would have been nine years old then, 0:03:16.360 --> 0:03:19.660 and not yet getting into famous boxing matches in bars 0:03:19.740 --> 0:03:25.540 or otherwise. And even Elijah's story can't be the true origin, either, 0:03:25.760 --> 0:03:29.210 because it's predated by a Scottish spelling of the phrase, 0:03:29.650 --> 0:03:34.410 the real McKay, by 40 years. The first known example 0:03:34.450 --> 0:03:38.170 of this phrase is from 1848, from a Scottish travel guide. 0:03:39.090 --> 0:03:41.190 And there are tales about where it comes from, too. 0:03:42.060 --> 0:03:46.120 A few possible contenders include a Scottish actor, bandit, or 0:03:46.220 --> 0:03:50.670 clan chief, all of whom shared the name Mackay. We 0:03:50.870 --> 0:03:54.590 may never know who the real McCoy, or Mackay, was. 0:03:55.790 --> 0:03:58.310 There's a chance that a number of real ones all 0:03:58.410 --> 0:04:02.960 helped popularize the phrase. We've got a slightly better idea 0:04:03.060 --> 0:04:06.520 of how calling dibs came to be. If you're unfamiliar 0:04:06.540 --> 0:04:09.500 with this phrase, it's popular slang in the U.S., especially 0:04:09.540 --> 0:04:13.320 among kids, used to refer to a claim over or 0:04:13.490 --> 0:04:17.630 first right to some object or privilege. The social rule 0:04:17.690 --> 0:04:20.450 is that you have to literally utter the term dibs 0:04:20.650 --> 0:04:23.609 or I call dibs in order to stake that claim. 0:04:25.000 --> 0:04:27.760 For fans of How I Met Your Mother, Barney was 0:04:27.920 --> 0:04:30.580 almost certainly not correct when he related the tale of 0:04:30.660 --> 0:04:34.020 Sir Walter Dibs, who coined the term in 1652 while 0:04:34.060 --> 0:04:37.940 adrift at sea on the SS Dibs. Rather, the phrase 0:04:38.150 --> 0:04:41.020 call dibs came into existence in the United States in 0:04:41.040 --> 0:04:44.920 the early 1900s, but does root from much earlier, in 0:04:45.060 --> 0:04:49.560 England in the 1690s at least. No less than John Locke, 0:04:49.690 --> 0:04:52.890 the philosopher and physician, wrote about kids playing a game 0:04:53.050 --> 0:04:57.410 called dibstones. This was a game like marbles or jacks, 0:04:57.690 --> 0:05:00.830 originally played with the knuckle bones of sheep or with pebbles. 0:05:01.300 --> 0:05:05.929 Each bone or stone was a dib. the connection between 0:05:05.970 --> 0:05:09.450 the game and the modern-day presentation of dibs is unclear. 0:05:10.300 --> 0:05:13.740 One hypothesis points to the word dubs, short for double, 0:05:14.160 --> 0:05:16.779 which a player of marbles might call if they knock 0:05:16.860 --> 0:05:19.580 two marbles outside of the game ring and thus lay 0:05:19.660 --> 0:05:24.839 claim to both. Also, by the mid-1800s in America, the 0:05:24.860 --> 0:05:27.620 word dib could refer to a small sum of money 0:05:27.900 --> 0:05:31.550 or a portion of an item. From this definition of 0:05:31.580 --> 0:05:34.450 a dib as a share of something— The term might 0:05:34.470 --> 0:05:37.320 have expanded over time to the 20th century usage of 0:05:37.420 --> 0:05:42.080 dibs as a kind of informal claim. But what about 0:05:42.240 --> 0:05:46.380 calling shotgun? This is a specific type of dib you 0:05:46.440 --> 0:05:49.570 call in some North American cultures when you're claiming the 0:05:49.670 --> 0:05:53.650 front passenger seat in a car, also called the shotgun seat. 0:05:54.910 --> 0:05:58.690 This phrase's origins are also pretty clear, though not quite 0:05:58.730 --> 0:06:03.260 as old as you might think. Okay. The American stagecoach 0:06:03.400 --> 0:06:07.940 era began in the early 1700s and lasted nearly 200 years. 0:06:09.310 --> 0:06:12.950 Before railways took over the job of public transportation, people 0:06:13.029 --> 0:06:18.390 largely traveled overland in stagecoaches. In the East and South, 0:06:18.570 --> 0:06:21.820 they'd go along established routes dotted with inns and taverns, 0:06:22.120 --> 0:06:27.240 making passenger travel relatively easy. In the less colonized West, however, 0:06:27.580 --> 0:06:30.770 it was a different story. The roads weren't as dependable, 0:06:31.110 --> 0:06:34.660 there were fewer support services, and attacks from outlaws or 0:06:34.740 --> 0:06:39.360 wild animals were more impossible. To protect passengers and drivers, 0:06:39.500 --> 0:06:42.820 the coach line sometimes stationed an armed guard next to 0:06:42.860 --> 0:06:47.080 the driver, especially if a stagecoach was also transporting valuables 0:06:47.230 --> 0:06:51.229 like silver bullion. The guard's preferred weapon may well have 0:06:51.270 --> 0:06:54.950 been a shotgun, which scatters pellets, making it relatively easy 0:06:55.010 --> 0:06:59.360 to hit your target at close range. The term ride 0:06:59.420 --> 0:07:03.159 shotgun was derived from this practice, though there's no evidence 0:07:03.260 --> 0:07:07.870 it was actually used during the stagecoach era. The first 0:07:08.000 --> 0:07:11.610 print reference to the phrase comes from Wild West literature 0:07:11.690 --> 0:07:16.010 from a few decades after the fact in 1912. But 0:07:16.050 --> 0:07:19.830 the Western genre soon latched onto the term, popularizing it 0:07:19.890 --> 0:07:23.370 during the next few decades when pulp fiction, movies, and 0:07:23.430 --> 0:07:26.570 eventually television about the Old West were all the rage. 0:07:28.180 --> 0:07:32.320 The 1939 film Stagecoach, starring John Wayne, featured the local 0:07:32.360 --> 0:07:37.300 marshal talking about riding shotgun. The phrase shotgun seat shows 0:07:37.360 --> 0:07:41.420 up in Western literature as early as 1940. There's even 0:07:41.440 --> 0:07:45.620 a 1954 flick titled Riding Shotgun that starred Randolph Scott 0:07:45.840 --> 0:07:49.740 as a stagecoach guard. From there, the phrase seeped into 0:07:49.780 --> 0:07:53.520 American popular culture in general, and car culture in particular, 0:07:53.800 --> 0:07:57.450 in the 1960s. It can be heard in George Lucas' 0:07:57.650 --> 0:08:03.180 quintessential teenage car culture film American Graffiti, released in 1973. 0:08:03.180 --> 0:08:06.100 And the phrase is still used today to indicate the 0:08:06.200 --> 0:08:09.840 front passenger car seat, which can be claimed, usually by 0:08:09.880 --> 0:08:14.400 kids or teens, by saying, shotgun. There are rules of 0:08:14.540 --> 0:08:18.510 etiquette for calling shotgun. Some passengers, like a best friend 0:08:18.570 --> 0:08:22.530 or romantic partner, might have permanent dibs. Sometimes the vehicle 0:08:22.590 --> 0:08:25.330 must be in sight of the group before shotgun is called. 0:08:26.270 --> 0:08:30.870 Of course, language is always evolving. We know even less 0:08:30.950 --> 0:08:33.270 about what we'll all be saying in the future than 0:08:33.510 --> 0:08:41.520 why we started saying things in the past. Today's episode 0:08:41.559 --> 0:08:44.020 is based on the articles, Why Do People Call Things 0:08:44.080 --> 0:08:47.850 the Real McCoy? by Stephanie Watson, What Are Dibs and 0:08:47.929 --> 0:08:51.180 Why Do We Call Them? by Terry Yardlegata, And the 0:08:51.230 --> 0:08:54.350 phrase riding shotgun came way after the West was won 0:08:54.530 --> 0:08:59.619 by Melanie Radziki-McManus, all on HowStuffWorks.com. BrainStuff is a production 0:08:59.630 --> 0:09:02.980 of iHeartRadio in partnership with HowStuffWorks.com and is produced by 0:09:03.020 --> 0:09:07.579 Tyler Klang. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, 0:09:07.900 --> 0:09:10.850 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.