A woodchuck

Sawn logs of wood

"How much wood would a woodchuck chuck" (sometimes phrased with "could" rather than "would") is an American English-language tongue-twister.^[1][2] The woodchuck, a word originating from Algonquian "wejack", is a kind of marmot, regionally called a groundhog.^[3] The complete beginning of the tongue-twister usually goes: "How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?"^[1][2] The tongue-twister relies primarily on alliteration to achieve its effects, with five "w" sounds interspersed among five "ch" sounds,^[4] as well as 6 "ood" sounds.

Answers

A traditional, if nonsensical, "response" to the question is: "A woodchuck would chuck as much wood as a woodchuck could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood".^[5] Other—similarly unhelpful—responses include "So much wood would a woodchuck chuck as a woodchuck would if a woodchuck could chuck wood!", "He would chuck, he would, as much as he could, and chuck as much wood as a woodchuck would if a woodchuck could chuck wood.",^[6] "He would chuck as much as a woodchuck could if a woodchuck could chuck wood.",^[7] and "As much wood as a woodchuck would if a woodchuck could chuck wood!"

A 1957 Associated Press piece refers to the question as "a riddle which beats the Sphinx, since it's still unanswered".^[8] A more concrete answer was published by the Associated Press in 1988, which reported that a New York fish and wildlife technician named Richard Thomas had calculated the volume of dirt in a typical 25–30-foot (7.6–9.1 m) long woodchuck burrow and had determined that if the woodchuck had moved an equivalent volume of wood, it could move "about 700 pounds (320 kg) on a good day, with the wind at his back".^[9][10] Another study, which considered "chuck" to be the opposite of upchucking, determined that a woodchuck could ingest 361.9237001 cm³ (22.08593926 cu in)^[11] of wood per day.^[12]

Origin

The origin of the phrase is from a 1902 song "The Woodchuck Song", written by Robert Hobart Davis for Fay Templeton in the musical The Runaways.^[13][14] The lyrics became better known in a 1904 version of the song written by Theodore Morse, with a chorus of "How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?",^[15] which was recorded by Ragtime Roberts, in 1904.^[16]

The tongue-twister is documented as "folklore" in 1972 at Farmington, Michigan.^[17] It is used in the title of Werner Herzog's 1976 film How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck, a documentation of the World Livestock Auctioneer Championship in New Holland, Pennsylvania.

Popular culture

• Google features this tongue twister as an Easter egg in its search engine, as well as Google Now.^[18][19][20] Several other virtual assistants, including Siri and Cortana, have their own unique, humorous responses to the phrase.^[21][22]
• In the parody-filled video game Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, Guybrush Threepwood asks a carpenter the question and gets a slight variation of the response: "A woodchuck would chuck no amount of wood since a woodchuck can't chuck wood."^[23] The conversation continues in a similar manner until Threepwood tells the carpenter that "a woodchuck should chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood, as long as a woodchuck would chuck wood".^[24]
• Ludacris incorporates this tongue twister in the Chamillionaire single "Creepin' (Solo)".^[25]
• American rapper Tyler, the Creator used an explicit version of the phrase on his hit song, "Tamale". His rendition of the phrase is "How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could ever give a fuck?"^[26]
• South Park character Eric Cartman, dressed as AWESOM-O, answered "seventeen".^[27]
• Swedish disc jockey and musician AronChupa released a song with the same title in 2020.^[28]

See also

• Alliteration
• Announcer's test
• Malapropism
• Spoonerism
• Theophilus Thistle

References