I’ve heard Granny on the “Beverly Hillbillies” refer to people as “goomers,” the same way that some might use “yo-yos” or “chuckleheads.” Is/was that an acutal slang in some part of the country, or was it coined just for the program.
Goober replaced cousin Gomer on “Andy Griffith,” then later on “Mayberry RFD.” “Goober” is a old word for peanut with an *African etymology, but I’ve heard the term used in recent (past 20 :eek: or so years) as a synonym for “rube” or “hick.” Was “goober” ever a word for “hick” before the programs, or did it just simply arrive that eponomously as Goober was the resident hick in Mayberry?
*And, other than recurring character “Ralph,” portrayed by Charles Lampkin and his son (whom I do not recall), and a guest appearance by Roy Glenn, the only things with African heritage to be seen in Mayberry.
The OED cites an 1871 reference indicating that during the Civil war, raw recruits from the Carolinas were called goobers after the peanut.
I have not been able to find anything on gomer or goomer. I do note that both B and M are voiced bilabials and wonder if the switch was simply a phonetic one with no other outside sources.
The speculation would then be a simple phonetic shift from goober to goomer to gomer.
OTOH, goomer and gomer may simply owe their existence to television, I really don’t know.
Since neither the man named Gomer in Genesis and Chronicles nor the woman named Gomer in Hosea (according to the English translations, of course), are depicted as particularly foolish or as hicks, I doubt that there is a carryover from that source.
Goomer is also a medical slang term for a trauma patient who arrives with overwhelming and untreatable injuries. It’s an acronym for “get out of my emergency room.”
I seem to remember (and this is from reading House of God oh so many years ago) that “Gomer”, as in “get out of my emergency room”, actually referred to people who came in with problems that weren’t actually life threatening, but then were difficult to send somewhere else, once they’d been admitted. Sending such a patient to another ward, for someone else to deal with, was (IIRC) referred to as “buffing and turfing.”
I’ll bow to the superior knowledge of robinh and Qadgop on the subject of gomerology. It’s been so long since I read House of God I wasn’t even able to remember the title until they mentioned it.
“that “Gomer”, as in “get out of my emergency room”, actually referred to people who came in with problems that weren’t actually life threatening, but then were difficult to send somewhere else”
The idea that “gomer” is an acronym for “get out of my emergency room” is clever but false. A patient’s transferability is not the key criterion. What makes a patient a gomer is the patient’s loss of mental faculties. A person in an irreversible coma is a gomer, regardless of how easy they might be to transfer. At the same time, a chronic alcoholic who hasn’t changed or even removed his clothes for two weeks and who has no acute medical problem other than a blood alchol of 0.20, someone whom you really don’t want in your emergency room, is not a gomer if they can carry on a conversation.
IIRC, another medical-oriented movie (“Coma”?) used gomer in the correct sense when a patient suffered a sever, irreversible neurological insult and one of the staff referred to her or him as “a real gome.”
I am confident that the modern medical us of gomer is derived from Gomer Pyle, a character with an intellectual functioning somewhere between normal and true medical gomerhood.
The House of God which popularized the term ‘gomer’ (fem. gomere) stated that it referred to a person who had lost that part of themselves which makes them human, i.e. cognitive functioning.
1.) “Goomers” most likely came about because Paul Henning and Dick Wesson, who wrote the “Hillbillies” episodes, found it funny when Irene Ryan barked the word in her Granny voice. It’s also likely a subtle reference to Goober of “The Andy Griffith Show”; both shows appeared on the CBS network throughout the 60s.
2.) As far as I know, both “goober” and “gomer” are used prodigiously as redneck epithets and most likely came about as a result of “The Andy Griffith Show”'s immense popularity. Shouting “Floyd” or “Emmett” at truckloads of inbred moonshiners just doesn’t carry the same punch.
<nitpick mode>
Goober didn’t really replace Gomer on the show; they were actually on at the same time.
tomndebb probably has the “goober” right. Lighter does give an earlier cite than the OED. 1862, “The Lt…was such a “goober” I don’t believe he knew which road to take.”
Lighter also cites 1863, “conscripts by the dozen…some from Mississippi state and “Goobers” from Tar river.” This would indicate that it was used to simply mean a native of the Carolinas at the time.
Lighter cites Goomer as first appearing in the Beverly Hillbillies, 1966. Meaning a “goof.”
Gomer Pyle first appeared on The Andy Griffith Show sometime between the Spring of '63 and the Summer of '64. In 1964, the term gomer is cited in print to mean (per Lighter) “a patient, especially if elderly, who is dirty, undesirable, or unresponsive to treatment, especially a poor or homeless man who habitually seeks emergency-room treatment for minor or imaginary complaints.”
"In 1964, the term gomer is cited in print to mean (per Lighter) “a patient, especially if elderly, who is dirty, undesirable, or unresponsive to treatment, especially a poor or homeless man who habitually seeks emergency-room treatment for minor or imaginary complaints.”
Perhaps in print but not in real life. In real life I have never heard a medical person use “gomer” that way. The definition given by Lighter could apply to a shpos (a patient who is dirty, undesirable, etc.) or to a crock (a patient who seeks emergency-room treatment for minor or imaginary complaints).
Coincidence?
Michel Quinion just ran a piece on gomerin his weekly piece Wold Wide Words. (He’s just revamped the site. Looks nice!)
The conclusion is pretty much the same as we see here:
He also traces the source back to the 60’s:
He concludes thus:
Read his piece, even if he doesn’t have much new info, it’s a pleasant read.
Yeah I see your point about my post. You justifyably have a bone to pick with the way I worded my post. Sometimes it’s hard to give cites without going into incredible detail. This is one example.
Lighter uses the definition which I gave, but his definition is more of a summary of all the cites for the term over a period of time. It was my fault not to say that.
The original 1964 medical/use cite was from The Journal of American Folklore. The next one was 1972 in National Lampoon. "Gomer–A senile, messy,or highly unpleasant patient. Then the 1978 cites from House of God. Also, in 1978, from Journal of American folklore "On the east coast of the United States, gomer is explained as an acronym for Get Out of My Emergency Room. On the west coast, the interpretation more usually advanced is Grand Old Man of the Emergency Room. 1979, in American Speech: The patient will become a gomer “unresponsive patient” within a short period of time.
Jomo Mojo William Safire offered the g-m-r/Hebrew etymology about 1982. Lighter dismisses it with the comment “…1982 quote does not merit consideration.”
What about Goofers? Here in the mountains of the Northeast, those folks who work in the backcountry or at summit stations refer to tourists and hikers as goofers. I’ve never heard this term outside of the region.
Lighter cites “goofer” from 1918: “They’re promoted to goopher standing. Then…they have to prove themselves gimpers.” F. Scott Fitzgerald uses it in 1920, spelled the same way. More cites from the 1920’s. All the cites together would indicate “a clumsy fool; lout; goof.” [Lighter]
We tend to use “gomer” as explained by Yeah–a patient who has minimal mental faculties remaining. They often stay on our service (I’m on Medicine at the VA this month) mostly because they have nowhere else to go. The even-less-kind term for a gomer is a “turn and water”. This is to be distinguished from a “camper”, which is a patient of relatively better function who is simply waiting for nursing home placement.
“Buffing and turfing” (or, simply “turfing”) is an art form. Unfortunately, on Medicine, we are much more often the turf-ee than the turf-er, since we can’t actually refuse admissions. (I’ve become adept at steering them to Neurology, though.) A more broad term is “dump”, which is a transfer of a patient from anywhere (another service, an outside hospital, a nursing home) because they didn’t want to deal with them. Dumps are common on Friday afternoons.
Also common on Friday afternoons is the “pop drop”. This is when the caregivers of an elderly patient (often his son or daughter) bring him to the VA ER complaining of dehydration or mental status changes (“he just isn’t himself”). They make sure he is going to be admitted, then mysteriously disappear until Monday morning.
(I just put together a glossary for incoming 3rd year students, so I’ve had medical slang on my mind.)
An old Southern term is “Swamp Goomer”. It is a hillbilly term for a witch, or “Goomer doctor”.
[REF:
]
(Sorry about the lengthy link.)
Something that you would not want to run into in the swamps.
Google needs to learn this term since there is slated to be a lot of swamp draining coming up soon. Swamp Goomers included.
I completely missed this response from this one-hit wonder from seven years ago (thanks, oblio212) right above this post, but it appears that is the context. In one episode Granny tries to rescue (Mr. Drysdale, I think) from some “goomer doctor.” That term does have some history predating “Beverly Hillbillies,” and pretty certainly has no connection to “Gomer.” And from there “Goomer” apparently morphed into a general dismissive term without the “doctor” connotation.
