Wood-chucking woodchucks, groundhog ticks, climbing groundhogs and more for Groundhog Day
Updated Jan 30, 2021;
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if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
A woodchuck would chuck all the wood he could
if a woodchuck could chuck wood!
That tongue twister originated in the refrain of the “Woodchuck Song,” which was written by Robert Hobart Davis and Theodore Morse and debuted in 1903 in the musical comedy “The Runaways.” The song was later sold to consumers as sheet music and recorded and sold on Edison wax cylinders, which were the predecessor to flat phonograph records, by Ragtime Bob Roberts.
The alliterative question and answer have little connection to the animal we know as the woodchuck. The animal was chosen for the little ditty because of its name, which originated as an interpretation by European colonists of the Algonquian word for the animal, “wuchak.”