You're listening to Away With Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I'm Grant Barrett. And I'm Martha Barnett. We heard from Heidi Hebron Marshall, who writes,

I have a job being a fake patient for medical students taking exams.

It's a very interesting and fun job and it's especially interesting now that the students have

to give us physical exams over Zoom.

When the students start asking, have you had fevers, chills, night sweats, headaches, joint pain, etc,

I always think, here comes the laundry list.

And that got me to thinking, what on earth is a laundry list?

I definitely assume it's a long written out list, but why would you need to write out a list,

especially if someone else was doing your laundry for you?

So why would she less... if someone else was doing your laundry for you.

So why would she list a bunch of symptoms and call it a laundry list?

There's no laundry on there.

And the reason is that it goes back to a time when people have a certain class

sent their laundry out to be cleaned. And you know it's usually associated with things

that are everyday or routine kind of drudgery.

It's not usually a positive connotation, is it?

I mean, you don't really.

Mm-mm.

There's a little bit of a negative strike to it, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Laundry list of complaints is a common way to put it.

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