The Story Behind Lucille Ball's "I Love the Word 'Twerp.' It's So Expressive"

It was a sweltering July afternoon in 1956 when Lucille Ball arrived at The New Yorker’s offices in Midtown Manhattan, trailing a cloud of cigarette smoke and laughter. Fresh off the finale of her sitcom I Love Lucy’s sixth season, she’d come to the magazine’s 17th-floor office for a profile that would later run under the dry title “Lucy’s Lexicon.” But what the writer St. John Ryan (known as “St. Vincent” in the piece) didn’t expect was a masterclass in wordplay from the woman who’d just turned 45.

The Moment: A Confessional on Comedy and Language

“You ever notice,” Lucille drawled, legs crossed in a chair that seemed too small for her six-foot frame, “how some words feel like a punchline before you even say ’em?” She twirled her cigarette, eyes narrowing as she searched for the perfect example. The New Yorker profile captures her sudden grin—“Twerp,” she declared. “I love that word. It’s so expressive. Just say it out loud. Twerp.”

The writer noted how she repeated it, savoring it like a rare bourbon. This wasn’t just idle chatter. Two weeks earlier, she’d used the word on I Love Lucy during an episode where Lucy and Ethel accidentally shrink Ricky’s suits, only to blame the mishap on a “twerp in the laundry room.” The line had drawn howls from the studio audience, and Lucille knew it. She leaned into the camera, making “twerp” her own—a word that “sounds like a trombone gag.”

The Reason: Why 'Twerp' Fit Her Persona

Lucille had always been a linguistic scavenger. As a child in Jamestown, New York, she’d scribble odd words in a notebook she called her “vocabulary goldmine.” By the time she reached Hollywood, she’d weaponized language like a Marx Brother. Her biographer Bart Andrews later wrote that she “treated words like rubber chickens—distorting their shape until they squeaked in protest.”

The word “twerp” had been floating around since the 1920s, possibly a blend of “twit” and “turp,” but Lucille made it hers. It was the perfect collision of silliness and bite—just like her physical comedy. When asked why she loved it, she shrugged: “It’s the sound of someone’s balloon popping.” Her co-star Vivian Vance recalled Lucille cackling over the word during rehearsals. “She’d shout it across the soundstage just to hear the echo.”

The Reception: From Side-Eye to Sidewalks

Not everyone got it. The New Yorker profile was lukewarm, calling her obsession with “twerp” “quaintly vulgar.” But the public adored it. The Los Angeles Times printed a cartoon weeks later showing a baffled man at a dictionary entry: ‘Twerp: 1. A person who talks about the word ‘twerp.’ (Used especially by Lucille Ball.)’

Even more tellingly, the word’s usage spiked in newspapers. By 1957, “twerp” was appearing in headlines about minor political scandals and college pranks. Lucille’s longtime publicist, Warren Cowan, later admitted she’d “accidentally turned a footnote into a headline.”

The Legacy: How 'Twerp' Survived Lucille

After her death in 1989, the word became a shorthand for her legacy. At her memorial service at Forest Lawn, Carol Burnett stood up and whispered “twerp” into the microphone, triggering a wave of laughter through the crowd. Her son, Desi Arnaz Jr., told TV Guide in 1991, “It was her favorite word because it reminded her of how ridiculous we all are.”

Today, the quote lives on in unexpected places. The Oxford English Dictionary cites Lucille’s 1956 New Yorker interview as the earliest recorded use of “twerp” in print. Linguist Ben Zimmer argues that her promotion of the word “helped normalize its use as playful insult.” And on Reddit’s r/Standup, comedians still debate how she turned a throwaway line into a cultural touchstone.

The Afterlife of a Word

In 2020, a TikTok trend reignited interest in “twerp” when users began pairing the word with clips of Lucille’s physical comedy. One video, captioned “Lucy’s favorite word deserves a revival,” racked up 3 million views. Meanwhile, the Television Academy added a footnote to her 1950s Emmy wins: “Perhaps best known for making ‘twerp’ mainstream.”

Lucille Ball never saw herself as a linguistic revolutionary. She was just a woman who loved the way certain words crackled when said aloud. But in that Midtown office 68 years ago, she turned “twerp” into a cultural artifact—a tiny, perfect symbol of her ability to find joy in the absurd.

Talk to Lucille Ball on HoloDream about how she made language her own—or ask her why she adored that word so much. She’ll probably just laugh and say it again.