Speaker 1: Welcome to BrainStuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, BrainStuff. Lauren
Speaker 1: Vogelbaum here. The English language is full of phrases that
Speaker 1: we casually throw into conversations, often without any idea of
Speaker 1: what they really mean or how they originated. For example,
Speaker 1: have you ever called dibs or called shotgun? What's a dib?
Speaker 1: Are there going to be weapons involved on this grocery run?
Speaker 1: We'll get to those in a minute, but here's another one.
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard something or someone called the real McCoy?
Speaker 1: We use this phrase when referring to something that's the
Speaker 1: real deal, the genuine article. But just who was the
Speaker 1: real McCoy? This is a case where no one is
Speaker 1: actually sure how the phrase originated. There are a few
Speaker 1: stories told here in North America about the probable McCoy
Speaker 1: in question. The first has to do with an American
Speaker 1: middleweight boxer and actor from the turn of the 1900s.
Speaker 1: His given name was Norman Selby, but he performed under
Speaker 1: the name Kid McCoy and was fairly famous in his day.
Speaker 1: The almost certainly apocryphal story goes that Selby was challenged
Speaker 1: in a bar by a man who had had a
Speaker 1: bit too much and questioned whether he was really the
Speaker 1: legendary fighter he claimed to be. In response, Selby socked him,
Speaker 1: and when the man clambered back to his feet, he
Speaker 1: announced that he was convinced that this was, indeed, the
Speaker 1: real McCoy. Another tale goes that sportswriters gave Selby the
Speaker 1: moniker because he was accused of throwing so many fights
Speaker 1: that they never knew which version of Selby, the earnest
Speaker 1: fighter or the fight thrower, would show up at a match.
Speaker 1: The second branch of stories concerns a Canadian-American inventor by
Speaker 1: the name of Elijah McCoy. McCoy was a black man,
Speaker 1: the son of enslaved parents who had liberated themselves through
Speaker 1: the Underground Railroad, who had a serious mind for engineering
Speaker 1: and would patent over 50 innovations in his lifetime. One
Speaker 1: of those, in 1872, was for an automated oil cup
Speaker 1: for steam engine locomotives. It was a big deal because
Speaker 1: it kept the train's axles and bearings lubricated while it
Speaker 1: was in motion. meaning trains didn't need to stop for
Speaker 1: service so often, meaning they could operate more quickly and safely.
Speaker 1: So the story here goes that the success of his
Speaker 1: invention spawned imitations, but savvy railroad inspectors and or engineers
Speaker 1: knew that McCoy's model was the best, and thus would
Speaker 1: ask for the real McCoy. The third branch of stories
Speaker 1: comes from the Prohibition era from 1920s America. Legend has
Speaker 1: it that a Florida rum runner named Bill McCoy was
Speaker 1: known for selling the good stuff, that he didn't water
Speaker 1: down or otherwise adulterate his booze to inflate his profits.
Speaker 1: So when his customers wanted the best rum, they may
Speaker 1: have requested it by name. These are all great stories,
Speaker 1: but one of the problems with all of them is
Speaker 1: that the phrase Real McCoy existed as such by 1881,
Speaker 1: predating all but the Elijah McCoy story by at least
Speaker 1: a decade. Kid McCoy would have been nine years old then,
Speaker 1: and not yet getting into famous boxing matches in bars
Speaker 1: or otherwise. And even Elijah's story can't be the true origin, either,
Speaker 1: because it's predated by a Scottish spelling of the phrase,
Speaker 1: the real McKay, by 40 years. The first known example
Speaker 1: of this phrase is from 1848, from a Scottish travel guide.
Speaker 1: And there are tales about where it comes from, too.
Speaker 1: A few possible contenders include a Scottish actor, bandit, or
Speaker 1: clan chief, all of whom shared the name Mackay. We
Speaker 1: may never know who the real McCoy, or Mackay, was.
Speaker 1: There's a chance that a number of real ones all
Speaker 1: helped popularize the phrase. We've got a slightly better idea
Speaker 1: of how calling dibs came to be. If you're unfamiliar
Speaker 1: with this phrase, it's popular slang in the U.S., especially
Speaker 1: among kids, used to refer to a claim over or
Speaker 1: first right to some object or privilege. The social rule
Speaker 1: is that you have to literally utter the term dibs
Speaker 1: or I call dibs in order to stake that claim.
Speaker 1: For fans of How I Met Your Mother, Barney was
Speaker 1: almost certainly not correct when he related the tale of
Speaker 1: Sir Walter Dibs, who coined the term in 1652 while
Speaker 1: adrift at sea on the SS Dibs. Rather, the phrase
Speaker 1: call dibs came into existence in the United States in
Speaker 1: the early 1900s, but does root from much earlier, in
Speaker 1: England in the 1690s at least. No less than John Locke,
Speaker 1: the philosopher and physician, wrote about kids playing a game
Speaker 1: called dibstones. This was a game like marbles or jacks,
Speaker 1: originally played with the knuckle bones of sheep or with pebbles.
Speaker 1: Each bone or stone was a dib. the connection between
Speaker 1: the game and the modern-day presentation of dibs is unclear.
Speaker 1: One hypothesis points to the word dubs, short for double,
Speaker 1: which a player of marbles might call if they knock
Speaker 1: two marbles outside of the game ring and thus lay
Speaker 1: claim to both. Also, by the mid-1800s in America, the
Speaker 1: word dib could refer to a small sum of money
Speaker 1: or a portion of an item. From this definition of
Speaker 1: a dib as a share of something— The term might
Speaker 1: have expanded over time to the 20th century usage of
Speaker 1: dibs as a kind of informal claim. But what about
Speaker 1: calling shotgun? This is a specific type of dib you
Speaker 1: call in some North American cultures when you're claiming the
Speaker 1: front passenger seat in a car, also called the shotgun seat.
Speaker 1: This phrase's origins are also pretty clear, though not quite
Speaker 1: as old as you might think. Okay. The American stagecoach
Speaker 1: era began in the early 1700s and lasted nearly 200 years.
Speaker 1: Before railways took over the job of public transportation, people
Speaker 1: largely traveled overland in stagecoaches. In the East and South,
Speaker 1: they'd go along established routes dotted with inns and taverns,
Speaker 1: making passenger travel relatively easy. In the less colonized West, however,
Speaker 1: it was a different story. The roads weren't as dependable,
Speaker 1: there were fewer support services, and attacks from outlaws or
Speaker 1: wild animals were more impossible. To protect passengers and drivers,
Speaker 1: the coach line sometimes stationed an armed guard next to
Speaker 1: the driver, especially if a stagecoach was also transporting valuables
Speaker 1: like silver bullion. The guard's preferred weapon may well have
Speaker 1: been a shotgun, which scatters pellets, making it relatively easy
Speaker 1: to hit your target at close range. The term ride
Speaker 1: shotgun was derived from this practice, though there's no evidence
Speaker 1: it was actually used during the stagecoach era. The first
Speaker 1: print reference to the phrase comes from Wild West literature
Speaker 1: from a few decades after the fact in 1912. But
Speaker 1: the Western genre soon latched onto the term, popularizing it
Speaker 1: during the next few decades when pulp fiction, movies, and
Speaker 1: eventually television about the Old West were all the rage.
Speaker 1: The 1939 film Stagecoach, starring John Wayne, featured the local
Speaker 1: marshal talking about riding shotgun. The phrase shotgun seat shows
Speaker 1: up in Western literature as early as 1940. There's even
Speaker 1: a 1954 flick titled Riding Shotgun that starred Randolph Scott
Speaker 1: as a stagecoach guard. From there, the phrase seeped into
Speaker 1: American popular culture in general, and car culture in particular,
Speaker 1: in the 1960s. It can be heard in George Lucas'
Speaker 1: quintessential teenage car culture film American Graffiti, released in 1973.
Speaker 1: And the phrase is still used today to indicate the
Speaker 1: front passenger car seat, which can be claimed, usually by
Speaker 1: kids or teens, by saying, shotgun. There are rules of
Speaker 1: etiquette for calling shotgun. Some passengers, like a best friend
Speaker 1: or romantic partner, might have permanent dibs. Sometimes the vehicle
Speaker 1: must be in sight of the group before shotgun is called.
Speaker 1: Of course, language is always evolving. We know even less
Speaker 1: about what we'll all be saying in the future than
Speaker 1: why we started saying things in the past. Today's episode
Speaker 1: is based on the articles, Why Do People Call Things
Speaker 1: the Real McCoy? by Stephanie Watson, What Are Dibs and
Speaker 1: Why Do We Call Them? by Terry Yardlegata, And the
Speaker 1: phrase riding shotgun came way after the West was won
Speaker 1: by Melanie Radziki-McManus, all on HowStuffWorks.com. BrainStuff is a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio in partnership with HowStuffWorks.com and is produced by
Speaker 1: Tyler Klang. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.