Chrysti the Wordsmith > Radio Scripts

The ice cream clerks who invented and dispensed America's favorite dairy confections from the 1920s through the 1950s were affectionately called "soda jerks." The jerk in their title was not the same as the one meaning "worthless fool," rather it described what they did for a living, "jerking" the soda dispenser handle all day long. The jargon invented by these ice-cream parlor heroes was a kind of slangy shorthand necessitated by the short-order atmosphere of the soda fountain.

One soda jerker expression still used by restaurant workers is eighty-six, meaning "we're out of whatever it is you ordered". Eighty-six is said to rhyme with "nix" meaning "no" or "nothing". And the numeric shorthand didn't stop there. Eighty-seven and a half meant "a pretty woman just walked in". Ninety-five signaled "a customer who didn't pay is walking out the door"; and thirteen was "the boss just walked in".

Food orders were condensed with jargon like a-pie, c-pie or coke-pie, meaning "apple-, cherry-, or coconut pie." Dog and maggot indicated crackers and cheese. Burn it and let it swim was an ice cream float; a large Coca-Cola was stretch one; a cup of coffee was draw one. Two cups of coffee? A pair of drawers!

Though the disappearance of the neighborhood ice cream parlor has rendered soda jerk jargon obsolete, much of that slangy vocabulary has nevertheless been lovingly preserved in many specialized dictionaries.

Radio Script > Soda Jerk