Pylimitics

It’s not really roasted turkey season, but who cares; it’s time to discuss “drumsticks”, or legs. They only look a little bit like drumsticks, of course, so why did that name arise? 

It was because not all that long ago, it was quite impolite to say the word “leg” out loud, particularly at the dinner table. After all, there were likely to be ladies and children present! Or no, actually they didn’t invite the children to the grownup table in those days, but the ladies were certainly in attendance. 

It was a troublesome taboo; not only were they forced to use “limb” or “joint” in talking about a turkey, but they couldn’t even easily refer to the things holding up the table. And it got worse; not only did they have to circumlocute their way around the turkey’s legs, but “thigh” and “breast” were off-limits as well. That’s probably why “drumstick,” not to mention “white meat” and “dark meat,” came in to turkey-related use. It showed up in a 1764 play, The Mayor of Garret:

“She always helps me herself to the tough drumsticks of turkies.”

I’m not sure whether that “helps me herself” phrase was common at that time.

The taboo against using the words mentioned above in “mixed company” (by which they meant both males and females) started to break down (slowly) in the second half of the 1800s. You can tell because that’s about when printed works started to poke fun at the whole notion. One of the leaders of this was the British novelist Frederick Marryat. His book Peter Simple, from 1834, includes:

“It was my fate to sit opposite a fine turkey, and I asked my partner if I should have the pleasure of helping her to a piece of breast. She looked at me very indignantly, and said ‘Curse your impudence, sar, I wonder where you larn your manners. Sar, I take a lily turkey bosom, if you please. Talk of breast to a lady, sar! – really quite horrid.’ ”

In another book, A Diary in America (1839) — this one seems not to be a novel — Marryat writes that an American woman told him that “limb” ought to be used when ladies were present, and quotes her: “I am not so particular as some people are, for I know those who always say limb of a table, or limb of a piano-forte.” 

Oliver Wendell Holmes, in addition to being a famous justice, also wrote a couple of novels, and Elsie Venner (1861), includes: “A bit of the wing, Roxy, or the — under limb?” 

John Farmer, in 1885, included this in his book Slang and its Analogues, Past and Present: “Between you’n me, red stockings ain’t becomin’ to all — ahem — limbs.”

All of these examples, in context, were intended to be funny. Even while they were assiduously avoiding words that could refer to body parts (even if they didn’t exactly), people back then were well aware, it seems, of a certain absurdity around the whole idea. So when you next sit down for a roast turkey dinner (and I realize that may be months away), feel free to refer to any part of the bird you please. Just be careful how you talk about our current taboos!