Whether it's used for elocution lessons or to settle a bet between friends, every tongue twister came from somewhere.
Tongue twisters have been screwing up speaking abilities around the world for centuries. As entertaining as tripping over tricky terms can be, early English twisters were also used to teach pupils proper speech. In a note to teachers in his 1878 book , J.W. Shoemaker reminded them of the "higher motive" of these confounding sayings: "To The Teacher—While many of the exercises ... may create amusement in a class, a higher motive than 'Amusement' has prompted their insertion. Practice is here afforded in nearly every form of difficult articulation."
Whether it's selling seashells by the seashore or buying Betty Botter's bitter butter, some of these difficult phrases go way back to when elocution was practiced as routinely as multiplication tables. Come along as we untangle the history behind a few familiar phrases. Fittingly, many tongue twister origin stories are just as knotty as the expressions themselves.
1. Peter Piper
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers;
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked;
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?
Peter and his famous pickled peppers in print in 1813 in John Harris's Peter Piper's Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation.
But as is the case with many classic tongue twisters, the rhyme itself may have already been in common use by that time (the offered similarly formatted phrases for each letter of the alphabet, and Peter clearly got top billing).
Several have also suggested the in question was based on 18th century French horticulturalist , though that connection should probably be taken with a grain of salt (or pepper, in this case).
Much like and her rumored seashore seashells (more on this later), Poivre's ties to the poem, while feasible, aren't necessarily rooted in concrete evidence. Poivre is French for "pepper," was both Latin for "pepper" and a typical British last name, and the man was for smuggling cloves from the Spice Islands in his day, so the supposed link makes sense. As a renowned gardener, Poivre may very well have pickled peppers with those stolen cloves, but we don't actually know for sure.
2. How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck?
How much wood would a woodchuck chuck,
If a woodchuck could chuck wood?
While it likely predates her, Vaudeville performer Fay Templeton is credited with putting the woodchucking woodchuck on the map. "How much wood would a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood?" was the chorus of a Templeton sang in 1903 in the Broadway musical The Runaways (not to be confused with the ).
Robert Hobart Davis and Theodore F. Morse wrote Templeton's "," and a few years later covered it on his 1904 record, boosting its popularity. The tongue-tripping refrain stuck around and even the title of director Werner Herzog's "How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck: Observations on a New Language" about the 13th International World Livestock Auctioneering Championship.
More recently, scholars have focused less on the origin of the phrase and more on the answer to its central question. In 1988, a fish and wildlife technician for the New York Department of Environmental Conservation when he posited if a woodchuck could chuck wood (because they actually ) it would be able to chuck about of the stuff—but that little detail must not have fit into the linguistic flow of the original rhyme.
3. And 4. Betty Botter and Two Tooters
Betty Botter bought some butter;
"But," said she, "this butter's bitter!
If I put it in my batter
It will make my batter bitter.
But a bit o' better butter
Will but make my batter better."
Then she bought a bit o' butter
Better than the bitter butter,
Made her bitter batter better.
So 'twas better Betty Botter
Bought a bit o' better butter.
