What's up with "hamburger sandwich"?

October 15, 2005 6:02 PM

Why do senior citizens refer to one-word objects with two words?

Maybe I'm just noticing this a lot more lately, but senior citizens around me - family, co-workers, even on television - are suddenly using two words to identify things I've always considered one-word objects, and it's only the elderly I've noticed doing it.

For instance: "Where did I park my Cadillac car?", "I ate a hamburger sandwich on a bread roll", "I'm going to the bank to get some cash money", etc. Where did this language habit come from?

posted by Servo5678 to writing & language (27 comments total)

I have never noticed any older people using such language and I live in Florida, home of one of the largest populations of senior citizens.
posted by Number27 at 6:25 PM on October 15, 2005

Cash money came from Jay-Z...

It's just codgerly geezer talk going back to the Depression.
posted by johngoren at 6:34 PM on October 15, 2005

Repetition is a form of emphasis. In rhetoric, this is called tautologia, and in American English, may have been a linguistic fad earlier in the century, much like Cockney rhyming slang.
posted by jimfl at 6:35 PM on October 15, 2005

Actually, I remember "Cash Money" from back in the early nineties, ala Cash Money Records.
posted by nitsuj at 6:37 PM on October 15, 2005

My mom calls jeans "blue pants." She's pretty old.
posted by granted at 6:44 PM on October 15, 2005

Cadillac car is famously used by Cotton Hill, Hank Hill's father.

I use "cash money" all the time but I can't tell you why. Probably a regionalism IK picked up from my parents.
posted by Mitheral at 6:57 PM on October 15, 2005

Names tend to evolve towards shorter forms as people grow used to new things, use the names more often, and begin abbreviating them for convenience. For example, the omnibus becomes the bus; phonograph records become records; and cassette tapes become tapes.

Someday you'll still be jabbering about your "cell phone" while your kids just call it a "phone" (and your parents still say "cellular phone").
posted by mbrubeck at 6:58 PM on October 15, 2005

Look, these are all old phrases that have been used up until the last few decades.

According to Wikipedia, hamburgers were commonly called hamburger sandwiches until approximately the mid 20th century. A bread roll is what you might put a hamburger steak on.

Your kids will think you talk funny too.
posted by Hildago at 7:06 PM on October 15, 2005

...phonograph records...
phonographic recordings, surely.
posted by boo_radley at 7:07 PM on October 15, 2005

"the internets" :)
posted by mecran01 at 7:47 PM on October 15, 2005

I've noticed this quite a bit in the South. I remember old people saying things like "sugar diabetes" or "The Wal-mart's " . My dad used to say "cash money" but to be funny. He had obviously heard it growing up in rural Louisiana.
posted by theperfectcrime at 8:17 PM on October 15, 2005

Two of my favorite repetitive redundancies: "poodle dog" and "widow woman"
posted by rob511 at 9:08 PM on October 15, 2005

"Poodle dog" is redundant, yes, but "German Shepherd Dog" is an official breed name.
posted by squidlarkin at 9:14 PM on October 15, 2005

"Cadillac car" may not be the best example to use; I get the impression from looking around the web that "Cadillac car" was a literal phrase Cadillac used to market its automobiles, probably in the 1960's (?).

It shows up in everything from Bob Dylan to ZZ Top to Steve Miller lyrics, and at least two Broadway musicals use that full phrasing. The first would be "Dreamgirls", which has a whole entire song called "Cadillac Car", and when used in context, the lyric is "got me a Cadillac Cadillac Cadillac / got me a Cadillac car / look at me mister, I'm a star". The other is "Little Shop Of Horrors", which features Audrey II asking Seymour "Woud you like a Cadillac car / or a guest shot on Jack Paar?" Both shows are set in the early 1960's.

So I would guess that in that case, "Cadillac car" was the original phrasing. The old folks may just be parroting the advertising.
posted by Asparagirl at 9:28 PM on October 15, 2005

It's pre-emptive repetition for the inattentive and hard of hearing. They also tell one-story yarns with two stories.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 10:49 PM on October 15, 2005

A lot of words that are now single words used to be two words, like "to-day", and "good-bye". My guess has always been that meanings change and words become truncated through use. It's possible that old people are used to the written form of the English language, and still retain those old usages.

As for "hamburger sandwich", I didn't know about that until I heard it used on Mystery Science Theater about a year ago. Probably, "hamburger" was once a necessary adjective to describe what kind of sandwich was being served.

A lot of old people either dislike change, are openly opposed to it, or don't care at all about the evolution of language.
posted by interrobang at 10:51 PM on October 15, 2005

And, by the way, I'm hoping that "PIN number" and "ATM machine" go the way of the "hamburger sandwich" within my lifetime, but it's really more likely that they'll become "pinumber" and "eightyemachine", or something like that.
posted by interrobang at 10:53 PM on October 15, 2005

I also hear it in the South -- I grew up in North Carolina, and this is the kind of thing that crotchety old folks there say.
posted by Vidiot at 2:25 AM on October 16, 2005

I live in Alaska and have never heard any of these repetitive redundancies from anyone of an older generation. Perhaps it is regional.
posted by rhapsodie at 2:47 AM on October 16, 2005

These explanations make a lot of sense. I have a grandfather who says "The Wal-Marts" for Wal-Mart and "Mackeydoos" instead of McDonald's. Old people talk funny.

It's not as bad as a co-worker who says "warsh" in place of "wash", i.e. "I had to warsh the car the last time I was in Warshington D.C." Old people talk annoyingly, too.
posted by Servo5678 at 6:23 AM on October 16, 2005

Hmm... those old people happen to be from Michigan originally, Servo? "Warsh" is pretty common for a Dutch accent, and "The Wal-Marts" is somewhat reminiscent of Michigan dialect, though I've never heard that, it's generally "Meijer's" (reinforced by the fact that their stores used to be called "Meijer's Thrifty Acres". Actually, sometimes my grandma would say "Thrifty Acres") or Kroger's or Farmer Jack's. It's often claimed to be random pluralization but I think it's actually possessive. Just like how you'd go over to Grandma's or Joe's (house), you go to Kroger's (store).
posted by dagnyscott at 6:29 AM on October 16, 2005

And this rule gets applied to restaurants that obviously aren't named after the owners, like "Hunan's" or "Ichiban's". This is exceedingly common in Minnesota, at any age group.
posted by squidlarkin at 7:39 AM on October 16, 2005

It's ATM and PIN to me and my friends now, so welcome to the happy shiney future!
posted by Mick at 7:58 AM on October 16, 2005

I notice it more from people from the northeast (PA, NJ) or the south (SC, NC, GA, TN, FL). Not so much from people I know from the midwest, and I couldn't tell you where people on TV and people I hear passing by on a busy street are from.
posted by Servo5678 at 7:59 AM on October 16, 2005

"Cadillac car" and the like may actually be influenced by trademark law. Technically your trademark is an adjective -- you can't sell "a Cadillac" as that's a noun, so as the trademark owner, you're supposed to say "a Cadillac car" or "a fine Reliant automobile" or whatever. The "proper" use of trademarks is of course an unnatural way to speak (nobody ever says "honey, please get some Cheerios brand oat cereal at the store" except in commercials) and gets eroded with time as the brand becomes successful and thus a part of daily life. That's okay, because once your trademark is well-established, it can handle a little erosion -- so long as it doesn't tip over into generic. Owners of new trademarks, especially fifty years ago, may have been a little more careful with that.
posted by kindall at 11:02 AM on October 16, 2005

"Pizza pie" is another one. That's what my folks called it when it was new in the US after the war.

And my dad also is one who hyphenates "to-day" because that's how he learned it. (He also tells me there's no reason to ever use the word "got," which I know he also learned in school. Weird.)

Some old books put an apostrophe in front of "phone," like "He called on the 'phone."
posted by GaelFC at 9:02 PM on October 16, 2005

It's not as bad as a co-worker who says "warsh" in place of "wash."

My West Virginia relatives say this, too. And I had a teacher's aide in my second-grade class in Huntington, WV that not only said "warsh", but used "elm" as the twelfth letter of the alphabet. Never heard that anywhere else.
posted by Vidiot at 7:10 AM on October 17, 2005