Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff.
Speaker 1: Lauren vogelbam here. I don't have any scientific statistics about this,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to say it's a safe bet that
Speaker 1: you have either given or received a piggyback ride at
Speaker 1: some point in your life. But if you stop to
Speaker 1: ponder that name, the piggyback ride, I mean, what's that
Speaker 1: all about. Although some pigs do grow to an impressive size,
Speaker 1: we humans have never really ridden on their backs, partially
Speaker 1: because they can grow to an impressive size and they
Speaker 1: can be opinionated. The origins of the word piggyback stretch
Speaker 1: to the mid fifteen hundreds and back. Then, when people
Speaker 1: carried bundles of various goods on their backs or shoulders,
Speaker 1: or on those of animals, that was called pickpack, since
Speaker 1: you picked up a pack to put it on your back,
Speaker 1: or possibly pick was a verbal variant of the word pitch,
Speaker 1: meaning to eve or fasten, since you were pitching the
Speaker 1: pack up on your shoulders either way, As is so
Speaker 1: often the case with language, pickpack morphed over the years.
Speaker 1: First it became pick a pack, and then pick a
Speaker 1: back since the pack being picked went on someone's back.
Speaker 1: Things get a little murkier from there. Some people think
Speaker 1: that by the mid eighteen hundreds, pick a back morphed
Speaker 1: into similar sounding phrases like pick a back or pickyback,
Speaker 1: which then eventually became piggyback. Others think that around that
Speaker 1: time people were confused by the pick a portion of
Speaker 1: pick a back, so they changed it to a word
Speaker 1: that they were familiar with that sounded similar piggy This
Speaker 1: is a language process called folk etymology. No one knows
Speaker 1: for sure whether people in Britain or North America were
Speaker 1: the first to bring pigs into the conversation when speaking aloud,
Speaker 1: but the earliest written reference seems to be from Britain
Speaker 1: from eighteen thirty seven, when a text called a dialogue
Speaker 1: in the Devonshire Dialect explained that schoolboys would sometimes carry
Speaker 1: each other in a pigaback ride. In the United States,
Speaker 1: the earliest written references to piggyback with the meaning that
Speaker 1: we use today are from the eighteen eighties. Of course,
Speaker 1: today piggyback is used in a wide variety of contexts,
Speaker 1: not just for giving kids rides on your shoulders. In
Speaker 1: the field of transportation, piggybacking means something riding on top
Speaker 1: of something else, such as cars being transported on a
Speaker 1: train's flatbed. It's also used in the trucking industry to
Speaker 1: denote a trailer that's hauling up to four more trucks
Speaker 1: in a chain. Each truck's front is mounted to a
Speaker 1: hitch while the rear wheels touch the ground. In astrophotography,
Speaker 1: piggybacking describes the practice of attaching a camera to a telescope,
Speaker 1: then shooting photos through the camera lens. In the music world,
Speaker 1: drummers often employ symbol piggybacking by mounting two or more
Speaker 1: symbols on the same stand. Healthcare providers can create intravenous piggybacks,
Speaker 1: where a smaller secondary IV bag is connected to the
Speaker 1: main line. The piggyback bag is used for intermittent treatments,
Speaker 1: and the piggyback setup allows the patient to avoid having
Speaker 1: a second dive site PopEd in. And then there's piggybacking credit,
Speaker 1: which refers to the practice of becoming an authorized user
Speaker 1: on the credit card account of a person with a
Speaker 1: good credit rating, which can help you establish credit or
Speaker 1: up your credit score. However, the traditional meaning does still apply.
Speaker 1: According to Guinness World Records. The fastest mile long piggyback
Speaker 1: race was completed in eleven minutes and eleven point eighty
Speaker 1: one seconds in twenty fifteen. The event took place on
Speaker 1: a track in Smith, England as part of an army fundraiser.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is based on the article why do we
Speaker 1: call it a piggyback Ride? On HowStuffWorks dot com? Written
Speaker 1: by bealanie Red Seepy McManus. Brainstuffs production of iHeartRadio in
Speaker 1: partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang.
Speaker 1: Four more podcasts from my heart Radio. Visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.