Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century (Vintage Books, 2020) is a collection of essays and other writings by disabled people. This is not a book of oral histories or a book that uses oral history as a method, but it’s nonetheless an important book for oral historians. To clear up any confusion, there […]
First published in 1985, Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language is now widely considered a landmark disability study. Tracing hereditary deafness on Martha’s Vineyard, a coastal Massachusetts island, Nora Ellen Groce discovered, in her historical investigation, an uncommon incidence of deafness over multiple generations on the island, but also that deaf residents were accepted and involved […]
Due May 2, 2025 Crownsville Hospital Public History Manager The Cultural Resources Section in the Planning Division is hiring a Contractual Crownsville Hospital Public History Manager. The primary role of this position is to: The position will work under the direction of the Program Administrator for the Cultural Resources Section in the Office of Planning and […]
Due April 17, 2025 The purpose of this Temporary Project Manager position is to support the City of Austin Parks and Recreation Department’s Historic Preservation and Tourism Program by conducting and transcribing oral histories regarding the Montopolis Negro School. The individual in this position will research approximately 15-25 interview candidates, who include former students, their […]
Since January 2025, the federal workforce has been experiencing unprecedented changes. Researcher Jason M. Chernesky is one of those affected, having been recently terminated by the DOGE from his role as Historian at the FDA. With Chernesky and the Organization of American Historians, the OHA is embarking on a project documenting the experiences of federal […]
Q: Am I showing my age? Once upon a time, a couple of decades ago, when you were ill or had an emergency, you would “call in sick.” Now it’s “calling out.” When did that happen?
A: People have been calling “in,” “out,” and “off” sick for dozens of years, but “call in sick” is the oldest and by far the most common expression for reporting one’s absence from work because of illness.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines “call in sick” as “to contact one’s employer, school, etc., typically by telephone, to report one’s absence that day, esp. due to illness.” The OED’s earliest example is from the 1940s:
“This being a holiday weekend, employees in Treasury’s loans and currency section … were warned yesterday not to call in sick either today or Monday under any circumstances” (The Washington Post, July 3, 1943).
The dictionary’s first citation for “call off sick” is from a West Virginia newspaper: “Personnel who frequently call off sick … should be checked at their homes to ascertain the legitimacy of their absence” (Charleston Daily Mail, May 24, 1958).
The earliest OED example for “call out sick” is from a Massachusetts newspaper: “Bray said no one called out sick in the DPW at all this week … [due] to his demands that anyone out sick must have a doctor to certify illness” (Sentinel & Enterprise, Fitchburg, April 16, 1976).
A similar expression, “call off work,” has been around since the the mid-1960s and means “to report one’s absence from (work, school, etc.), typically by making a telephone call,” Oxford says.
The dictionary’s first citation is from a 1965 labor arbitration decision: “He would receive a final warning if he didn’t improve on the tardiness, absenteeism, and calling off work without notice” (from Labor Arbitration Awards, Vol. 65-2).
A search with Google’s Ngram Viewer, which compares words and phrases in digitized books, indicates that “call in sick” is clearly the most common of the four expressions.
We’ve seen suggestions online that “call out sick” may be especially popular in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, but we’ve seen no linguistic evidence to support this. The Dictionary of American Regional English doesn’t mention the usage.
