I like English, literature and grammar. I always liked learning about idioms and phrases when I was in English class. However, I certainly never learned about all the phrases that are in common use and I still use some today that make me wonder about the origins of the phrases.
I was watching The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson and one of his guests said, “If we had our druthers.” While I know that I’ve heard the phrase plenty of times, this got me thinking about the phrase. What exactly are druthers? I know that it means if we had things the way that we want them, but maybe there was something else to it as well. Could druthers be something specific?
I went to Merriam-Webster to look up the definition of “druthers.” It turns out the word simply means “preferences.” Now the phrase makes sense, but Merriam-Webster told me that it was dialect that means free choice and a form of “would rather.
I guess I could see how would rather could from to “drather” and then be turned to “druther.”
I decided to look some more and it seems that is exactly the case!
The from of druthers cited as drathers appears in Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine in the January 1970 publication. It was used in a story called Centrepole Bill by George F. Emery. The story says, “If I was a youngster, I ‘drather set up in any profession but a circus-driver, but a man can’t always have his ‘drathers.”
Somehow along the years, “drathers” was changed to druthers. There is no real documentation, but it may simply have had to do with accents and people hearing the words differently.
The word “druthers” first appeared in 1876 in a publication called Dialect Notes.
It says, “Bein’ I caint has my druthers an’ set still, I cal’late I’d better pearten up an’ go long.”
(After typing that, I feel like I’ve just gotten out of an episode of The Beverly Hillbillies? Does anybody else feel like that after reading such a sentence?)
Sources:
“Druthers – Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary”. Merriam-Webster. February 10, 2010 http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/druthers>.
Martin, Gary. “If I had my druthers”. The Phrase Finder. February 10, 2010 http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/194850.html>.
