Adrianne Jeffries: The internet doesn’t have all the answers. But that doesn’t mean we can’t find them. This is Underunderstood.

Billy Disney: I’m Billy Disney. 

Adrianne Jeffries: I’m Adrianne Jefferies.

John Lagomarsino: I’m John Lagomarsino.

Regina Dellea: I’m Regina Dellea. Today on the show, Billy’s questionable TV habits lead us to an even more questionable ankle tattoo.

Billy Disney: Okay, so I was watching, you know… sometimes I like to watch some reality television programming, and I was watching this show, Catfish. You guys familiar with this program?

John Lagomarsino: Yeah, we’re familiar with Catfish. 

Max Joseph: You went to see her, but you didn’t see her.

Nick: She blindfolded me.

Max Joseph: What?

Nev Schulman: This is 50 shades of cray.

Nev Schulman: Whoa, this place looks rough.

Billy Disney: So I was watching Catfish. It was this episode of this guy, Nick. 

Nev Schulman: Nicky!

Max Joseph: Nick!

Nick: What’s up guys?

Max Joseph: What’s up?

Nev Schulman: What do you do in Philly?

Nick: I’m armed security for a government contract site. 

Nev Schulman: Damn. Sounds pretty serious. 

Billy Disney: He was in love with this woman named Jasmine. 

Nev Schulman: How did you meet Jasmine? 

Nick: Five months ago I met Jasmine on a dating app. 

Billy Disney: …who turns out was a catfish. 

John Lagomarsino: Wait, define that for me. What does this mean? 

Adrianne Jeffries: It’s like… 

Regina Dellea: I thought catfish meant you were underage. 

Billy Disney: Whoa. What? What did you think this show is about? 

Adrianne Jeffries: It’s To Catch a Predator.

John Lagomarsino: Yeah, that’s a different…

Billy Disney: Yeah, no, this is not To Catch a Predator. This show is Catfish, which is based on the documentary of the same name. Catfish basically just means someone using a fake profile. Someone misrepresenting themselves online, usually in order to have a relationship with someone via the internet.

So in this episode, again, there was this guy, Nick, from Philadelphia. He had been talking to this woman who called herself Jasmine online, and Jasmine was the suspected catfish. Turned out she was a catfish.

Adrianne Jeffries: What was fishy about her? 

Billy Disney: Well, this is a pretty typical Catfish situation, but she had been using photos of someone that she deemed to be much more attractive than her. She felt self-conscious about the way she looked, so she found a model type on Instagram or something like that, and copied all of her photos and made her own account.

Jasmine: When I made the profile, I didn’t even really talk to anybody. 

Billy Disney: Nick was from South Philadelphia. 

Nick: Oh, what’s up guys? 

Jimmy: How yous doing?

Billy Disney: And there’s a lot of South Philadelphia slang being thrown around like “yous guys,” stuff like that.

So Jasmine was posing as this woman who she was not, and talking to Nick. Things were getting pretty serious. And at one point she invited him to where she lived, but she got really nervous because obviously she wasn’t the woman who she was representing herself as online physically.

And so she wouldn’t let him come in, and then she made him put on a blindfold and kissed him while he was wearing a blindfold. And then he never got to see her, which is pretty weird. But what’s even weirder was in the episode, they have Nick relay this information with his cousin, Jimmy, who’s also from South Philadelphia, and his reaction is just very… well, I have a clip. Let me just play this clip. 

Nev Schulman: Wild. 

Jimmy: Yo what? Yo this is… that’s gas. 

Max Joseph: What are you saying? 

Nev Schulman: What’s the word? 

Max Joseph: “Gay-us?” 

Jimmy: Gas.

Max Joseph: What’s that? 

Jimmy: It’s like a South Philly term. It just like… gas. It just means crazy. 

Max Joseph: Gay-us? 

Jimmy: G-A-S, gas.

Nick: He’s got it tattooed on him.

Jimmy: I got it tattooed…

Max Joseph: Wait let me see.

Nev Schulman: Gas.

Max Joseph: Gas.

Billy Disney: Okay, let me let me jump in here.  So this guy has a tattoo on his ankle that says “gas,” like G-A-S, which he pronounces “gay-us.” And he’s acting like it’s perfectly normal.

Regina Dellea: No, it makes total sense. 

Billy Disney: And so I was fascinated by this. Like, I know Catfish, it sort of has a formula. Like, the producers kind of gotta stick to the normal formula to make it work. But like, if I was there, I feel like if I was working on the show, it would be like, “Stop everything. This is the story. Why does this guy have a tattoo that says ‘gas’ on his ankle?” But they just… I mean, that’s that’s the extent of it. They move on after that. So…

Adrianne Jeffries: But they must have thought it was interesting because they included it.

Billy Disney: Sure. Yeah. But there’s a bigger story to be told. 

Regina Dellea: Mmm.

Adrianne Jeffries: I feel the same way.

Billy Disney: So I’ve been trying to find any reference to this I can, like Googling “South Philly gas,” “South Philly gay-us,” trying to figure out if there’s… if people in South Philly actually use this word this way, and I can’t find anything. 

Adrianne Jeffries: It’s ungoogleable. 

John Lagomarsino: Uh… 

Billy Disney: Did you find something?

John Lagomarsino: Here we go. 

Regina Dellea: But is it just Wawa references? Because everything I’ve been looking up is Wawa, and then it includes the word gas because it’s a gas station. 

Billy Disney: Yeah, it’s a really good gay-us station. 

John Lagomarsino: Good point. I’m only seeing Wawa. 

Regina Dellea: It’s a gay-us station. 

Adrianne Jeffries: I had no idea South Philly slang was so strange. Or that there was a lot of South Philly slang. 

John Lagomarsino: Is it possible that this guy was using some kind of slang term that he both misheard and misspelled in a tattoo?

Billy Disney: That’s what I’m wondering. So I want to… I want to get a hold of this guy also want to talk to the guy who tattooed gas on somebody’s ankle. 

John Lagomarsino: Oh, of course. Yes.

Billy Disney: And ask him, like, was this weird to him? Or was he like, “Oh, yeah. Totally, you went gay-us on your ankle.”

John Lagomarsino: Or was this guy also the victim of a prank where he told the guy, “I want gay-us tattooed onto me,” and the tattoo artist was like, “sure,” and he spelled it “gas.”

Adrianne Jeffries: Right, is this going to be basically like a second catfishing of this guy? 

John Lagomarsino: Right. 

Billy Disney: But I also couldn’t find anyone talking about this like it was weird. Like I tried searching Twitter for “Catfish gas.” Stuff like that.

John Lagomarsino: Of course. Yeah. So what’s the plan here? Do we just show up in Philly and find this guy? 

Billy Disney: Yeah.

Regina Dellea: Coming up, Billy goes to Philly to find the King of Gas.

Adrianne Jeffries: Billy, how was Philly? 

Billy Disney: Well, I didn’t go to Philly. It’s really close to me, actually, it’s only like an hour from my house. But… an hour too far. 

Adrianne Jeffries: So you’re telling us you did not get the answers that we’ve been looking for. 

Billy Disney: No, I did get the answers! Actually, the real reason that I didn’t go is because it was actually sort of hard to coordinate with these two because they like doing interviews together. It’s kind of their thing. 

John Lagomarsino: How’d you get in touch with them? 

Billy Disney: They were actually really easy to find. They’re very active on social media. The only hard thing was navigating their many nicknames, so.

Adrianne Jeffries: What are their nicknames?

Billy Disney: Well, so their real names are Nick DiDonato and Jimmy Harrity, but Nick goes by Nicky, or his hip-hop name…

Nick: They call me Nick Fresh. 

Billy Disney: …Nick Fresh. And Jimmy goes by James, Lord Flacko Slim, Bro Wit Eyepatch. But the way he introduced himself to me was…

Jimmy: I’m Jimmy Gas.

Billy Disney: …Jimmy Gas. They’re pretty classic Italian South Philly guys. 

Nick: I grew up in… well, we both grew up in South Philly.

Jimmy: Two blocks away from each other. 

Nick: Yeah. Our family’s, you know, traditional Italian. Loud. 

Billy Disney: So, as you guys know, I’m from outside of Philadelphia. So I sort of very quickly found myself loosening up and, you know, slipping into a little bit of Philly talk.

Billy Disney: Yeah, no problem. 

Billy Disney: There are things that I do say that I’m sort of self-conscious of that sound very Philly. So you guys know how a certain mutual friend of ours will always give me a hard time about the way I say “wolf?”

John Lagomarsino: You mean “wolf?”

Adrianne Jeffries: And do you mean Jordan Oplinger? 

Billy Disney: Yes, Jordan. Yes. Jordan razzes me so much about this.

Adrianne Jeffries: He’s a real razzer, that Jordan.

John Lagomarsino: Wait. We all know what you’re talking about, but for the people at home, could you just spell the word that you’re attempting to pronounce? 

Billy Disney: W-O-L-F. Wolf.

Adrianne Jeffries: Right. So the idea is that you are pronouncing four different letters when you say that. That’s that’s your claim, right?

Billy Disney: That is my truth. And so, you know, since I’m with some Philly guys, we’re talking about wooder, we’re talking about wooder ice, getting a cheesesteak wiz wit and, you know, we talked a little bit about wolf.

Billy Disney: But there’s little things that I will say sometimes that don’t even register to me. Like the word W-O-L-F. I say “wolf.” 

Jimmy: “Wolf?” And we just say “wolf.” 

Billy Disney: Yeah exactly. I’m the same way. Okay, good. Good to know. 

John Lagomarsino: Billy, this is what you refer to as a “dark L,” Is that right? 

Billy Disney: Yeah, it’s a dark L. 

Regina Dellea: A dark L is not a thing, just to get it out there.

Billy Disney: Well. So we talked about the Philly accent for a while. 

Jimmy: Philly is known for having a thick accent. 

Nick: Right. Even when we go to the West Coast, or even down south, most people they’ll think you’re from New York. But when you live closer to around Philly you know that it’s not even close to how someone from New York [sounds]. It’s got its own distinct accent. 

Billy Disney: So the word “gas,” specifically. What was that moment like? It seemed like they were confused. Were they genuinely confused about what you were talking about?

Jimmy: Yeah. See, I use gas in literally every sentence I use, so it’s just like normal for me.

When I said it, the look on their face, they had no idea what I said. They’re like, “Can you repeat that?” I was like, “Gas.” I don’t know. I’m just so used to saying it. I didn’t think about, “Well they probably have no idea what I’m saying.”

Billy Disney: Is that something… Where did you pick that up?

Jimmy: People I know have been saying gas forever. And I just started using it years ago and it just stuck as my word. I got it tattooed on my ankle and everything. 

Billy Disney: So, what… this is just like people growing up said it? 

Jimmy: Yeah, like [you] really can use it for anything. Like, “the situation is gas.” Not The Situation, I’m saying. But it’s like, you know what I mean? 

Billy Disney: So, sorry. Yeah. I just want to jump in here to point out that he’s clarifying that the word “gas” can describe any situation in the sense that it can be used for any circumstance, not that it can be used to describe Michael Sorrentino, aka The Situation from MTV’s Jersey Shore.

Adrianne Jeffries: An important clarification.

Billy Disney:  A very important clarification. So anyway, I push him on it a little bit. Like, is this really totally normal to him or is it just the South Philly thing? Or is it even really a South Philly thing? 

Nick: I would say it’s moreso a particular area in Philly type word, you know.

Jimmy: Yeah. 

Nick: Like like this region. 

Jimmy: Yeah, like, South…

Billy Disney: Do older people where you’re from? Do your parents say it? 

Jimmy: Yeah my parents say it, people I work with say it. A lot of people. All my friends say it.

Billy Disney: That’s really interesting.

Jimmy: Any scenario you can think of, you can use the word. 

Billy Disney: Like what? Give me some more.

Nick: I doesn’t have a definition. 

Jimmy: It really doesn’t have a definition. That’s the best part.

Adrianne Jeffries: I just keep thinking about that Mean Girls scene where Regina is like, “Stop trying to make fetch happen.” 

Gretchen Wieners (Lacey Chabert): You love him. And he totally complimented you. That is so fetch.

Regina George (Rachel McAdams): Gretchen stop trying to make fetch happen. It’s not going to happen. 

Billy Disney: Well, gas is already happening. The gas train has left the station.

Regina Dellea: But it hasn’t really left the station. It stayed in the station and the station is South Philly. 

Billy Disney: Sure. But in the station they’re using it, and they’re using it for such a colorful collection of situations. So he actually ran me through a bunch of different uses. So I want to quiz you guys, if you’re okay with that.

John Lagomarsino: Yes.

Regina Dellea: Great.

Billy Disney: Okay, maybe we should have some kind of game mechanic. Like a way of buzzing in. 

Regina Dellea: We could just yell “buzz.” 

Billy Disney: Or you could yell “gas.” 

Regina Dellea: Mmm, no.

John Lagomarsino: I’ll yell “gas.” 

Billy Disney: Okay, so the first one should be pretty easy. It’s how he used it on Catfish, which is saying “that’s gas.” Any guesses as to what that means? 

Regina Dellea: Buzz buzz buzz.

Billy Disney: Regina, can you just say “gas” so it’s consistent?

Regina Dellea: Gas.

Billy Disney: Thank you. Regina, yes.

Regina Dellea: It’s like, “Oh that’s wild.” Or like, “That’s crazy.” 

Billy Disney: Well, let’s hear from a Jimmy himself. 

Jimmy: Yeah, “that’s crazy.” “I can’t believe this is happening. Like, “That’s gas. Literally.”

Adrianne Jeffries: Literally gas. 

Billy Disney: “That’s Gas. Literally.” Okay, next. Question number two: this one is from his Twitter bio, which says, “prolly gassin’.”

Adrianne Jeffries: Mmm, so it’s a verb now.

Regina Dellea: But… Gas. 

Billy Disney: Okay, Regina. I believe you gassed in first. 

Regina Dellea: Like, “probably joking.” 

Billy Disney: Hmm. Okay. The judges say close enough. Here is Jimmy with his answer. 

Jimmy: Yeah. So “prolly gassin’.” How do I explain that?

Nick: Like, “lit.”

Jimmy: Yeah, like “lit.” Probably having a fun time, probably doing something stupid.

Billy Disney: Okay, third and final round. This is worth double points. This one comes from his Instagram bio, which says “gas and gains.” 

Adrianne Jeffries: Gas. 

Billy Disney: Yes, Adrianne. 

Adrianne Jeffries: Money. 

Billy Disney: Okay. Any other guesses? 

John Lagomarsino: Does that mean she got it wrong?

Billy Disney: You’re free to buzz in. 

Regina Dellea: Gas. 

Billy Disney: Yes, Regina. 

Regina Dellea: Is it just like “fun?”

John Lagomarsino: Gas. 

Billy Disney: Yes, John. 

John Lagomarsino: Is it protein powder?

Billy Disney: Okay. Well, I actually think you all win the game because the real answer is sort of a combination of all of those things.

Jimmy: Nonsense and the gym. 

Adrianne Jeffries: Nonsense and the gym. 

Billy Disney: Yeah, “gas and gains.”

So anyway, maybe you guys aren’t, but at this point I’m pretty convinced this is actually something he really does say a lot. He’s not just making this up. So I believe him that this is a genuine thing. That is very ingrained into who he is as a person. But I still didn’t feel like I really understood where it came from, and also why he says it in such a unique way… “gay-us.” So I talked to a linguist: Dr. Betsy Sneller. 

Betsy Sneller: I’m a postdoctoral research fellow in the Learning and Development Lab at Georgetown University. 

Billy Disney: If anyone is qualified to explain this to me, it’s Dr. Sneller. 

Betsy Sneller: So I study how language changes. And the way that I study it is by looking at a dialect, specifically Philadelphia English, and how it changes from one generation to the next.

John Lagomarsino: Huh. 

Billy Disney: So she’s not from Philly, but she came to Philly to study under this guy William Labov at UPenn. Labov is sort of a legend in the world of linguistics. He’s like 90 now, but he’s credited with starting the field of sociolinguistics — at least in the U.S. — in the 1960s. 

Adrianne Jeffries: And what’s sociolinguistics?

Billy Disney: So it’s basically taking measurable, empirical data on how people speak and using that to study social factors. So like class, gender, race — stuff like that — and how those things affect language. She was originally actually compelled to come and work with him because of the work he was doing with linguistics to combat racial discrimination.

But once she was there she also developed a passion for the way people in Philadelphia speak. 

Betsy Sneller: Philadelphia English, as it turns out, is one of the best studied dialects of English in real time because this guy, Bill Labov, started recording speakers in Philadelphia starting in the 1970s.

(Labov archival recording): That’s the only way you could get out of it. Or like, we’d date — I would date — and my father would say, “Where you going?”

Betsy Sneller: So we have just a ton of recordings of people in Philly. So we have very detailed information about how the dialect has changed over time. So I spent six years in Philly doing my PhD and I think it’s impossible to not fall in love with Philly. Easily my favorite city.

Billy Disney: So I just kind of also got right to the point with her and I asked her about the clip from Catfish.

Billy Disney: So I sent you this clip from the MTV show Catfish. 

Betsy Sneller: It’s such a great clip.

Billy Disney: Well, first of all, what was your initial reaction to what was going on there?

Betsy Sneller: So for me, actually, the funny thing is even though I study that  — and, in fact, my dissertation is on the pronunciation of “ah,” so I should be really good at understanding what he’s saying — but I misunderstood him. I thought he was saying “gay ass.” So, yeah. So I misinterpreted it and I think everyone else in the room of the clip was like, “What are you saying?”

Jimmy: That’s gas. That’s… 

Max Joseph: What are you saying?

Nev Schulman: What’s the word?

Max Joseph: “Gay-us?”

Jimmy: Gas. 

Billy Disney: Yeah, so she she thought he said “gay ass.” But once she figured it out, the pronunciation at least made sense to her. 

Betsy Sneller: And then of course as soon as it comes out it’s like, “Oh. Of course. That’s ‘gas.’ That’s how a Philadelphian would say the word ‘gas.'” He exhibits a really prototypical Philadelphian pronunciation of that word. 

Billy Disney: So this is actually one of the defining characteristics of Philadelphia English and Dr. Sneller is obsessed with it.

Betsy Sneller: Oh my gosh, just the most beautiful — it’s called a split short A system. So this is the vowel sound in the word “trap” or “cat,” where in Philadelphia there’s actually two pronunciations of that vowel. There’s “ayah” and “ah” and the rules that govern which words are pronounced “ayah” are really complex.

Billy Disney: So I’m going to break this down for you. Ready?

John Lagomarsino: Uh-huh.

Billy Disney:  In Philly tawk, words that have a short A, like the word “can” or “pass” can sometimes be pronounced like “ayah.”

Regina Dellea: “Cayan?”

Billy Disney: So “cayan” is actually one of them, but there are very specific rules for how this works. It only works if the A comes before the following letters: there’s M, so “ham” becomes “hayam.”

Adrianne Jeffries: Oh my God. A hayam sandwich? 

Billy Disney: Yeah, hayam sandwich. And there’s a bunch of these. There’s the letter F, there’s what’s called a voiceless TH sound… 

Regina Dellea: Wait what is a voiceless TH?

John Lagomarsino: “Tttth” instead of “thuh” 

Regina Dellea: What? 

John Lagomarsino: “Tttth” instead of “thuh.” So “thuh” is voiced. 

Regina Dellea: But like, “path…”

John Lagomarsino: Yeah, is non-voiced. 

Adrianne Jeffries: Payath

Regina Dellea: You’re going down a bayad payath.

Billy Disney: Yeah. exactly. But I didn’t get through all the letters! So there’s also the letter S, as in…

Adrianne Jeffries: …gas.

Billy Disney: Exactly. But if a word doesn’t have one of those letters after the short A, then you should switch from the “ayah” pronunciation to the more standard “ah” pronunciation. So “cat,” like in “Catfish,” is not pronounced “cayat.” It’s pronounced “caht.” So you would say, “I saw the episode of Catfish about gayas.”

John Lagomarsino: Huh. 

Regina Dellea: This feels really difficult.

Billy Disney: You don’t even have any idea how difficult it can really get, because there’s also some pretty wild exceptions to these rules. So in a Philly accent, the words “mad” and “sad” don’t rhyme anymore. They’re “mayad” and “sahd.” And this is like a real pattern that they have recordings going back decades.

If you find video of people from South Philly talking, or just Philly in general, you will see these patterns emerge. The context in which he is pronouncing the word as “gayas” makes total sense.

John Lagomarsino: Okay, so long story short, yeah, he’s not the only person who would say G-A-S that way. 

Billy Disney: Exactly. 

Regina Dellea: But he’s part of a select group of people who would use it with this meaning, or this range of meanings.

Billy Disney: Well, right. Exactly. So that’s what I was trying to figure out. And so I started to talk to Betsy about this a little bit more.

Betsy Sneller: …and that phrase “that’s gas.” That actually hasn’t shown up in… So we ask all of our participants, “What makes a Philadelphia accent? What makes a Philadelphia dialect?” And people will point out things like “jawn” and “wooder” and “wooder ice…”

Billy Disney: “Jawn,” J-A-W-N, basically can mean anything. It’s a catch-all word in the Philly region. “Wooder” is water. “Wooder ice” is flavored ice or shaved ice, Italian ice.

Betsy Sneller: But to my knowledge, not a single one of our participants has ever pointed out the phrase “that’s gas.” That “ayah” sound always comes up, but never in the word “gas.”

Billy Disney: Right.

Betsy Sneller: So it’s really interesting to me that he sort of focused in on that one word and that one phrase.

Billy Disney: Yeah, and calls it out specifically as a South Philly thing. 

Betsy Sneller: Yeah. Yeah, I got to tell you, I spent a lot of time in South Philly and listening to recordings of people from South Philly, and I haven’t heard it.

Billy Disney: It seemed odd that there was such a different answer from the academic and from the person from South Philly who said this word. So I asked Nick and Jimmy about that.

Billy Disney: Is that weird to you? Like, does it seem like she should have encountered it?

Jimmy: Nah, because honestly I feel like “gas” is more of like… with people around my age, you know what I mean?

Billy Disney: Right.

Jimmy: Like 20, 21.

Nick: Yeah, even the people that are old, they say because they’re around you.

Jimmy: Yeah. Like if I said it around someone I don’t know, they’ll be like, “What did you say?” Just like on Catfish. But people I work with, my family, older friends, they just know what I mean when I just say my words.

Billy Disney: So this seems somewhat contradict what he told me earlier, right? 

Regina Dellea: Because earlier he was like, “Everybody says it. It’s everywhere.” 

Billy Disney: Right, and he said his parents say it.

Regina Dellea: Yeah.

Billy Disney: I asked him, “Do older people say it? People around the block?” And he’s like, “Yeah. Everybody says it.”

Adrianne Jeffries: And now he’s saying if he says it to someone he doesn’t know, they’re like, “What did you say?”

Billy Disney: Yeah, I was very confused, very suspicious, and then Nick jumped in and said something really interesting. 

Nick: I didn’t know what it was at first either, but I’m just used to it. 

Billy Disney: Oh, really? You didn’t know what it was at first? 

Other: No.

Jimmy: It’s hard to give a definition. 

Nick: Because he uses it in so many ways. 

Billy Disney: Right. 

Adrianne Jeffries: So it’s “fetch.”

Billy Disney: I think it might be “fetch.” Because they grew up two blocks from each other and Nick is saying he didn’t know what it was.

Billy Disney: So wait, I just want to get to the bottom of something, Jimmy… you said with “gas” that your parents said it, you grew up around it, but it also sounds like maybe you’re at the…

Jimmy: Oh, I made it what it is. I am the hype man for gas. 

Billy Disney: Okay. So Jimmy, you’re saying you’re like the king of gas. 

Nick: He’s the gas…

Jimmy: I’m the self-proclaimed king of gas. 

Billy Disney: Nice. I guess, Jimmy, just to clarify: so you encountered the word “gas” when you were little. You didn’t invent it, necessarily.

Jimmy: Yeah, I did invent it. I mean, it’s been around forever. I was reading The Glass Menagerie, and I think the one character’s name was actually Jim, and he said, like, “Why you gassin’ me?” And I was like, “Wow.” Like the character’s name is Jim and he said, “Why you gassin’ me?”

Adrianne Jeffries: I’m sorry?

Jimmy: I lost my mind.

Regina Dellea: In the what? 

John Lagomarsino: Pause it. 

Billy Disney: Yeah. 

Regina Dellea: In the what?

Billy Disney: Sorry. In The Glayass Menagerie.

John Lagomarsino: No, he said in the Glaze Menagerie, I think…

Regina Dellea: What is that?

John Lagomarsino: No, he’s totally messing with you.

Billy Disney: Okay, so I have in front of me here, The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams… 

Regina Dellea: The Glayass Menaygerie. 

Billy Disney: Yes, The Glayass Menaygerie, the classic play from 1944. And on page 66, the character Jim O’Connor says, “What are you gassing about?” So it could make sense that this was when he latched onto the word. I mean, he could be messing with me, but it also seems real. He just pulled that out of thin air.

John Lagomarsino: Yeah.

Billy Disney:  And it really is in The Glass Menagerie. 

Regina Dellea: Fine. But what about “that’s gas.” Where does that come from? 

Billy Disney: So, that’s a great question. I thought saying “that’s gas” must have been something that Jimmy made up himself, but he didn’t. When I talked to Dr. Sneller, even though she had never heard this in Philadelphia, she said there is a place where they do say this. 

Betsy Sneller: It is a common saying actually in Ireland, where people will say it to mean, like, “that’s crazy.” (MISSING)

Billy Disney: Oh, really, in Ireland they’ll say, “That’s gas.”

Betsy Sneller: “That’s gas.” Yeah. So I don’t actually know how it got to Philadelphia, but Philly does have a big Irish population. So it’s possible that there’s some roots there.

Billy Disney: Yeah, so there’s a there’s a lot of Irish people in Philly, specifically in the northeast, but there is a sizable Irish population in South Philly. And I watched a bunch of YouTube videos, those kind of videos where a person will rattle through a bunch of unique words or phrases from where they’re from, and “that’s gas” came up a bunch of times in videos of Irish people talking about things they say.

YouTuber 1: Next up is the word “gas.” I’m sure you all know what gas is, but “gas” in Ireland basically means “funny.” “He was gas last night.” “That comedian I saw he was gas.” “That is gas.”

YouTuber 2: “Gas” describes something funny. So you could say something like “Tom Segura, he’s a really gas lad.” That means, “Tom Segura is a funny guy.”

YouTuber 3: In Ireland if you describe something as “gas,” it means it’s really, really funny. Hilarious.

Billy Disney: So this explanation to me seems pretty likely because, again, there is a sizable Irish population in South Philly that has…

John Lagomarsino: Yeah, but where would he have gotten it from? He didn’t say it was his parents, right? 

Adrianne Jeffries: He just picked it up on the mean streets of South Philly. 

Jimmy: Well, no. I mean, I heard it before. It’s been used since… 

Billy Disney: But do people use it in the way you use it, where it can mean anything? 

Jimmy: Yeah, that’s how I picked it up, just from people using it and I just, like, I just gassed it up.

Nick:  He super hyped it times ten. 

Billy Disney: You just did it, like, all the time. 

Yeah.

Okay. Well, I guess now we know if it takes off more broadly — like if it becomes a bigger thing outside of Philly — we know who started it.

Jimmy: Exactly. 

John Lagomarsino: So basically some variation of “that’s gas” or “you’re gassin’ me” or using the word “gas” in some way… like, this may have come from Irish people in the Philly area, or it may have come from Jimmy hearing it in The Glass Menagerie. And through some combination of absorbing all of this, he made it his own, and sort of made it his linguistic trademark, and I guess that must be, like… Like what about the tattoo? Is that also just part of his linguistic trademark now? Like, where do you even get that tattoo?

Billy Disney: It was the weekend after his senior prom and he was at the beach —down the shore as they say in Philadelphia. And, you know, they were kind of partying and they all decided to get tattoos.

Jimmy: So me a couple of my friends, we were all gonna get it… we were actually gonna get just lip tattoos.

Billy Disney: So he’s saying they’re planning to get lip tattoos, which are… they’re effectively temporary tattoos, right? Because you get it tattooed on the inside of your lip and it just wears off fairly quickly. But then everyone bailed on him. And so he’s like, “Screw it. I’mma gas it up.” 

Jimmy: I said, “You know what?” I said, “I put it on my ankle.”

I literally said, “Listen, just put gas on…” He said, “gas?”. I said, “Yeah. Like, gas.” 

Billy Disney: Did he know what you’re saying at first? Or did you have to spell it for him? 

Jimmy: No, he knew what I was saying. He was just confused. I was like, “Yeah, I just want the three letters on my ankle.” 

Billy Disney: And now he claims that all of his friends and family use the word the way that he does, which is likely the result of what Dr. Sneller told me linguists call “a community of practice,” where you develop your own norms of speech. And so among you and the people you interact with a lot, you kind of just have these things that get ingrained in you. And that can be driven by just a few people’s personality quirks.

So I would say he’s kind of a word entrepreneur. His cousin Nick told me that after the episode of Catfish aired, a bunch of people privately reached out to them about the word “gas.” 

Nick: People were just saying the words in the DMs. Like, you know, “Gas.” “Teach me how to speak more Philly slang,” or whatever. “Teach me how to use the word ‘gas,'” you know what I mean?.

Billy Disney: Wait, you mean like girls? Like, “Teach me how to…” 

Nick: Girls, yeah. There was a bunch. Like, you know, “Teach me more Philly terms,” or… 

Billy Disney: Like, “Talk Philly to me?”

Nick: Yeah, basically. Basically. “Talk Philly to me.” “Teach me how to use the word ‘gas,'” or whatever. So it just kind of caught on.

Billy Disney: Personally, I think all of this is really great, because the Philly accent is actually disappearing. Many of the defining characteristics of Philly English are fading away.

Radio Announcer: And now, Preston & Steve’s News Update with Kathy Romano. 

Preston Elliot: Today is Tuesday December 11th. Good morning, Kathy. 

Kathy Ramano: Good morning. In the news this morning…

Billy Disney: So shortly after I talked to Dr. Sneller, she was on a morning radio show in Philadelphia called the Preston & Steve Show. It’s a very popular show — I listened to it when I was in high school, a lot of people in the area listen to it — and one of the hosts, Kathy Romano, was talking about how when she first started working in media she had to hide her Philadelphia accent. 

Kathy Ramano: Betsy, I think you’ll appreciate this. So I had a friend who worked in the television industry here in Philadelphia. He’s from Philadelphia. He has since moved from here and works out in LA, but in the start of his career somebody told him that his Philadelphia accent was so bad. So he actually he bought a book and he took classes to get rid of his accent, and now he is very neutral — like you would not be able to tell one bit that he’s from Philadelphia. And he actually gave me, when I first started out in the industry, he gave me a few pointers because I was getting a little bit… and I think I still do have it, but… I work hard on certain words so that I don’t sound… I don’t say “wooder,” you know?

Betsy Sneller: Yeah, this is one of the biggest bummers for me that… you know, I love local dialects. I think they’re incredible. But we also live in a world where — especially if you work in the media — in order to get ahead or be taken seriously to some extent you do have to kind of adopt that neutral sounding…

Steve Morrison: You’re dissuaded from having that…

Betsy Sneller: Exactly.

Billy Disney: And so, I don’t know, this touched me. I was like, “Yeah, you know what? You’re right. I should not be ashamed of my Philly accent. I shouldn’t try to hide it because I work in the media New York City. I should be more like Jimmy and Nick and embrace it.” So I made one last phone call.

Billy Disney: Hey Jordan. How’s it going? 

Jordan Oplinger: Good. 

Billy Disney: You know how I’ve been saying that I say a dark L?

Jordan Oplinger: Mmhmm.

Billy Disney: But you but you don’t seem to believe me that that exists, right? 

Jordan Oplinger: No. I don’t think that’s a thing. 

Billy Disney: Well, hold onto your butts. Can you hear this?

Jordan Oplinger: Yeah.

Billy Disney: One other question, while I have you on the line… something that a lot of my friends tease me about, the way I speak… so, the word W-O-L-F…

Betsy Sneller: Oh, do you say wolf?

Billy Disney: Well, I say “wolf,” but people tell me I’m saying “woof.” 

Betsy Sneller: Yeah. Oh, that’s a beautiful example. Yeah.

Billy Disney: But I think they say it more like “wollllf”? And I’ve tried to look into it, and the thing I tell people is that I’m saying a dark L. 

Betsy Sneller: Yes.

Billy Disney: And they tell me that that doesn’t exist.

Betsy Sneller: Well, okay. So first of all a dark L absolutely exists. 

Billy Disney: Thank you.

Betsy Sneller: Yeah. No, absolutely. Every single speaker of English has dark L’s except for maybe Welsh English speakers? But you, I think, are doing something a little bit more extreme, which is called L vocalization, which is you’re turning that L into a vowel.

Billy Disney: Interesting, OK.

Betsy Sneller: But it’s really normal and you should tell your friends that you talked to a linguist and she said that you were totally normal.

Billy Disney: Yes. Thank you. So you can confirm that I am both not saying the word incorrectly, and that there is an L in there somewhere, in the way I say it.

Betsy Sneller: Exactly. 

Billy Disney: Thank you.

Betsy Sneller: You’re welcome. 

Jordan Oplinger: All right. Yeah. I’m happy to be wrong there. 

Billy Disney: Okay, so you’re willing to concede that dark L are real, I’m perfectly normal, I’m saying the animal when I say “wolf.” 

Jordan Oplinger: Yeah. Or the the anchor. The CNN news anchor. 

Billy Disney: Oh you’re talking about…

Billy & Jordan:  Wolf Blitzer.

Billy Disney: Yes.

Jordan Oplinger: Yeah. Wow. I’m impressed.

Billy Disney: I feel like this is a deep wound that I had with you, that you would just pick at every once and a while. 

Jordan Oplinger: Really? Do you lay awake at night thinking about this? 

Billy Disney: I, sometimes… Yeah. So this is actually really nice. I feel like now… 

Jordan Oplinger: You got some closure.

Billy Disney: Yeah, and I feel even closer to you than I already did. You want to go get coffee or dinner sometime soon? 

Jordan Oplinger: Yeah, sure.

Billy Disney: Great. Maybe we’ll get matching “wolf” tattoos on our ankles. 

Jordan Oplinger: No.

Billy Disney: Okay, well… coffee, though? 

Jordan Oplinger: Sure.

Adrianne Jeffries: Underunderstood is reported and produced by Billy Disney, Regina Dellea, John Lagomarsino, and me, Adrianne Jeffries.

John Lagomarsino: You can find more about gas, including links to Dr. Sneller’s complete dissertation and Nick and Jimmy’s line of original gas merch at underunderstood.com.

Billy Disney: If you want to support the show, the best way to do that is to share it with a friend. You can find links to subscribe, you can find our social media, you can find full transcripts, and a whole lot more on our website. 

Adrianne Jeffries: And if you have a burning question that the internet can’t answer, send us an email: hello@underunderstood.com. Maybe we’ll look into it. 

Regina Dellea: Thanks for listening. We’ll be back next week.