‘to pee on a stick’: meanings and origin

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The colloquial phrase to pee (also to wee, to piss) on a stick means:
– to take a pregnancy test of a type involving urinating on a disposable plastic stick which immediately indicates the result;
– also, more generally: to take any of various other diagnostic tests of this type—cf., below, quotation 3.

This phrase occurs, for example, in a review of Mom! A New Musical, produced at the Burnsville Performing Arts Center’s Black Box Theatre, in Burnsville, Minnesota—review by Liz Rolfsmeier, published in the Star Tribune (Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA) of Sunday 20th April 2014 [page N3, column 1]:

Reba Clamp, of Minneapolis, opens the show as a woman in labor. By the end, it circles back to her final monologue, “Peed on a Stick,” which depicts an anxious woman, who has just embarked on a new career, waiting for the results of a pregnancy test. “She logically knows it’s not time to have a baby,” Clamp said, “but she really, really wants one.”

These are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences of the phrase to pee (also to wee, to piss) on a stick that I have found:

1-: From Condom ads necessary message, by David Graupner, published in the Wisconsin State Journal (Madison, Wisconsin, USA) of Sunday 12th February 1995 [page 3B, column 3]:

As I write this column it is Monday evening at about 7:45 p.m. The two girls and three boys in my household (all under the age of 14) are watching “Dave’s World” on the much-respected WISC-TV. Tonight’s plot involves birth control and contains such lines as “I’m peeing on a stick,” “Is that a vas deferens in your pocket or are you happy to see me?” and a discussion of tubal ligation vs. vasectomies.

2-: From Bridget Jones’s Diary, a novel by the British journalist, novelist and screenwriter Helen Fielding (born 1958)—as published in the Independent (London, England) of Tuesday 13th June 1995 (here):

Friday 9 June
Went to the chemist to discreetly buy a pregnancy test. […]
[…]
For the first two hours this morning I kept staring at my handbag as if it was an unexploded bomb. At 12.30 I could stand it no longer, grabbed the handbag, got in the lift and went to the loos two floors down to avoid the risk of anyone I knew hearing suspicious rustling. For some reason the whole business suddenly made me furious with Daniel. It was his responsibility, too, and he wasn’t having to spend £8.95 and hide in the toilets trying to wee on a stick.

3-: From Make the Connection: Ten Steps to a Better Body—and a Better Life (New York: Hyperion, 1996), by the U.S. talk-show host Oprah Winfrey (born 1954) and the U.S. exercise physiologist and personal trainer Bob Greene (born 1958) [Oprah’s Story, by Oprah Winfrey: page 4]:

By the end of the year I was 150 pounds. Thus began diet after diet in my search for the perfect weight-loss method. First, the Atkins diet: Eat all the fat, cheese, butter, eggs, and bacon you want, just don’t eat any carbohydrates, and be sure to pee on a stick to make sure your body isn’t completely breaking down.

4-: From Watch out where you park: You might end up pregnant, about supermarket car parks, by Irene Haskins, published in the Columbia Daily Tribune (Columbia, Missouri, USA) of Thursday 22nd January 1998 [page 8A, column 5]:

We’ve all seen perfectly able-bodied people park in handicapped spaces, so don’t think a few fatties won’t try this flim-flam. Also, don’t think a smattering of unscrupulous skinny Minnies won’t stoop to padding themselves. Pretending to be pregnant is a small price to pay for such a perk.
Should there be an in-house doctor to give exams? Will suspect parkers be forced to pee on a stick to see if it turns positive?

5-: From a review of the U.S. sitcom For Your Love—review by Tim Goodman, published in the San Francisco Examiner (San Francisco, California, USA) of Tuesday 17th March 1998 [page B2, column 4]:

The lines are delivered with a paucity of comic timing. Peete, when told maybe she didn’t do the pregnancy test just right: “I think I know how to pee on a stick.”
She might as well have said this: “Here is a line I’ve been told to read.”

3 thoughts on “‘to pee on a stick’: meanings and origin

  1. “As I write this column it is Monday evening at about 7:45 p.m.”

    If it evening, no need add “pm” to “7:45”.

    This is so often with Americans, even from newscasters, you hear something like “At 5am in the morning”.

    What is beyond the pale, though, is time as shown by digitally: “12:00am” or “12:pm”.

    “am, pm” can never follow “12:00”. For the first means BEFORE 12:00, AND THE SECOND means AFTER 12:00.

    Pascal has this virus invaded Australia/New Zealand too?

    Lately, on one occasion, I heard from an Englishman.

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      1. Hi Pascal,

        First I apologise for all those typos in my last comment regarding “am, pm”.

        A nocturnal bird that I am, I have my moments of lapses too, when the eyelids become too heavy to prevent them from stopping.

        In my drowsiness when I made that comment about “am, pm” I forgot to add the following:

        “am, pm”, as of course you know, are used in what (at least in the UK) is known as the “12-hour clock.”

        I have never come across the 12-hour clock at:

        a) airports

        b) sea ports

        c) railway stations.

        So if a plane or ship or train arrives or departs at noon, the time displayed would be “12:00” or a word meaning noon.

        But that would assume, in this globalised world, that everyone understands what noon means.

        Thus the “24-hour clock” method is used to denote time. Imagine the 12-hour clock system at these places of arrival/departure were used to denote noon, or midnight: “12:00am, 12:00pm” (which are contradictions of terms)….the confusion it would create.

        As I said in my comment, in the US there is a wide-spread usage of explaining the obvious (“At 5am in the morning”), and from this extreme the digital method of showing time has gone to the other (12am, 12pm).

        So far, I’ve heard only one person from Britain “explaining” that something like “5am” is before noon. No doubt, eh, time will come when, as in many things, the Brits take after their cousins across The Pond and someone like you will be on the receiving end of such a verbal siege.

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