Blah, Blah, Blah

Since ancient times, speakers of every language have made up nonsense syllables to indicate contempt for what other people were saying to them.

We’ve even inherited the ancient Greek nonsense syllables bar-bar-bar in the word barbarian: The Greek word barbaros meant “foreign, strange, ignorant.” According to the OnlineEtymology Dictionary, the word barbaros was an onomatopoeic formation echoing the unintelligible speech of a foreigner.

The most common nonsense syllable used to represent empty talk in the United States is blah:

The earliest OED documentation of blah in the sense of “meaningless, insincere, or pretentious talk or writing; nonsense, bunkum” is 1918.

Blah is usually repeated when the sense is “empty talk”:

When big data is just so much “blah, blah, blah”

Getting Past “Blah, Blah, Blah” When Talking to Prospects

Sometimes a single blah means the same thing:

I’ve been overwhelmed by the amount of jabber in the world – it’s a vast cloud of blah.

As a plural noun, “the blahs” are a state of despondency:

You’ve got the blahs.  You’re not feeling hopeless, but you’re not feeling good either.

As an adjective, blah means “lethargic, unenthusiastic, listless, or torpid”:

What to Do When You Feel Blah About Your Job

“Blah, blah, blah” recently found its way into the news when a political candidate in Oregon blasted a newspaper reporter who demonstrated his lack of interest in what another candidate was saying by writing down “blah, blah, blah” instead of her actual words.

And perhaps the longest sequence to date of this string of nonsense syllables occurs in a television ad in which actor Gary Oldman holds a telephone to his ear and says “blah blah blah” for five seconds straight.

Another set of nonsense syllables is “yada yada yada.” Variations of this utterance are documented in the OED beginning in 1947. I first heard it on the Jerry Seinfeld show where I understood it to mean “details too boring to mention.”

Beans and More Beans

onsidering the flurry of comments triggered by my inclusion of a bean idiom in arecent post, I decided to give the humble bean a post of its own.

The noun bean is Germanic in origin. August Fick (1833-1916) German comparative linguist, suggested that bean was cognate with faba, the Latin word for bean, but according to the OED, “phonetic considerations render this doubtful.”

Originally, the word bean referred only to the broad bean (Faba vulgaris), but now it refers to any seed that resembles it.

Human beings and beans have had a long relationship; Egyptians buried them with their dead, and Homer mentioned them in the Iliad. On the ancient Roman feast called the Lemuria (or Lumuralia), the pater familias (father of the family) got out of bed at midnight to walk around the house barefoot, throwing black beans over his shoulder. The rite was intended to exorcise any malevolent spirits that had accumulated in the household during the previous year.

Pythagoras instructed his followers “not to love beans,” but he may have been warning them against meddling in politics, not forbidding them to eat beans; beans were used as markers in political elections.

Artistotle equated the bean with venery (pursuit of sexual pleasure); to him, “abstaining from beans” meant “keeping the body chaste.”

As common objects of daily life, beans found their way into literary and proverbial use. “Not worth a bean” came to mean worthless. Chaucer (1343-1400) uses the expression in “The Merchant’s Tale.” The hero of the tale is a knight who, after 60 years of bachelorhood, finally decides to marry:

“For no other way of life,” he said, “is worth a bean.”

A person who “does not have a bean” is poor indeed, although the bean in this expression may originate elsewhere than with the legume. A slang term for a sovereign or a guinea was bean. “Not to have a bean” meant “not to have a cent.”

“Not to know beans about something” is to know nothing about it:

Charles Faddis Does not Know Beans About Nuclear Energy

“To spill the beans” is “to reveal a secret”:

Drunk Whistleblower Spilled The Beans On Chemtrail Front Company For CIA

The business world has a couple of bean expressions all its own. A “bean counter” is a contemptuous term applied to an accountant or other financial expert by people who feel that creativity is more valuable than mere record-keeping. A beanfeast or beanfest is an annual dinner given by an employer to his employees.

The word bean is slang for head:

“I’m a bit short on brain myself; the old bean would appear to have been constructed more for ornament than for use, don’t you know…” –P. G. Wodehouse, My Man Jeeves

Wodehouse and other British writers used “Old Bean” as a friendly term of address: “You don’t mind my asking, do you old bean?”

“Use your bean” means “think!” The little cap called a beanie gets its name from this meaning of bean, as does the baseball term bean ball, “a ball thrown at a batter’s head.” This application of bean has also given us a verb bean, “to hit someone on the head.”

A beanery is a cheap restaurant, presumably because the meals are heavy on beans. The American city of Boston–famous for its baked beans–is often referred to as “Bean Town.”

The expression that inspired this post is “full of beans,” meaning “full of energy and high spirits”:

[In winter I try] to rise and shine, full of beans, every day. 

[Reba] seems fresh, fit and full of beans, projecting herself the way I’m told she always does…

When I defined “full of beans” as “full of energy and high spirits,” several readers informed me of another meaning: “full of baloney” (or what bologna becomes once it is digested.)

“Full of beans” in the sense of “energetic” probably originated as stable slang. Bean-fed horses were observed to be in good condition and lively, as in these examples from the OED:

1870   Daily News 27 July 5   The horses [...] looked fresh and beany.

1843 R. S. Surtees Handley Cross II. vii. 199   [Hounds, horses], and men, are in a glorious state of excitement! Full o’ beans and benevolence!

Another 19th century use of “full of beans” noted as stable slang was applied to a person “whom sudden prosperity had made offensive and conceited.” I suppose that such a stuck-up person could be seen as “full of beans” in the sense of being “full of it.”

Apparently both meanings are current, so don’t be surprised if you get a puzzled look if your meaning doesn’t match that of your listener.

I’ll end with what is probably the best-known bean quotation in popular culture, Rick’s farewell to Ilsa in the movie Casablanca:

Ilsa, I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.

A reader from Brazil asks for clarification on the expressions “by the way” and “as a matter of fact,” having heard that they are interchangeable expressions to be used when a person wants to change the subject of a conversation.

by the way
As one of its earliest meanings, the expression “by the way” had the literal meaning of “along the way” in the sense of something happening in passing on a journey. For example, “I lost my money by the way.”

The use of “by the way” in conversation is figurative. A person thinks of something else while in the process of talking:

We went to the Crystal Theater over the weekend to seeTitanic. By the way, while we were there, we bumped into Leroy and his new girlfriend.

The expression does introduce a new subject, but not as a deliberate ploy to change the subject. The new subject has been suggested by something already being talked about.

as a matter of fact
This expression means, “in fact, really, actually.” Its strongest use is to correct a falsehood or misunderstanding, as in this example:

Most people probably believe that the actress Judy Holliday, who acted the part of a dumb blonde in Born Yesterday, was really of low intelligence. As a matter of fact, she had an IQ of 172.

By the way vs. As a matter of fact

In its weakened use, “as a matter of fact” still means, “in fact” or “actually,” but not in the sense of correcting a falsehood. It seems to be used as one might say indeed for emphasis or contrast.

Here are some examples from the Web:

I asked my sister if she drank diet soda. She told me that she did. As a matter of fact, she was getting ready to crack one open that moment.

At 12 years old, I wasn’t a fat kid. As a matter of fact, I was pretty skinny.

The weight isn’t going to instantly fly off in the first week. As a matter of fact, I gained weight before I started losing.

I am doing so well in my health. As a matter of fact I have dodged several colds that my husband has come down with.

Yes, you have to deal with co-workers. As a matter of fact, you have to interact with them daily.

It is possible that someone uncomfortable with the turn a conversation has taken might use one of these expressions to introduce an entirely new topic, but that is not their general function.