You may have a regular order at your local diner, but you might not be familiar with some classic diner lingo. While phrases like "cup o' Joe" and "sunny side up" eggs are thought to originate from harried waitresses through decades of American diner culture, the term "Adam and Eve on a raft" is much less well-known today.

"Adam and Eve on a raft" is a derivative of "Adam and Eve," which is a shorthand phrase used to order two eggs at a diner, typically poached but sometimes fried. Putting Adam and Eve on a raft means the order also includes toast, and the first printed reference of the phrase comes from 1891, possibly in New York's Bowery area.

Other origin stories from Boston, Philadelphia, and Omaha cropped up in the late 1890s, noted in newspaper sourcing such as "Chronicling America." Variations of the phrase include "Adam and Eve on a log," which adds sausage, or even "Adam and Eve on a raft and wreck 'em'" or "Shipwreck that order!", which scrambles the eggs.

Alta Language Services says that biblical references were fairly common in early diner lingo. When a customer orders ribs, the callout is "gimme a First Lady," a nod to the notion that Eve was created from Adam's rib, and since Eve ate the forbidden apple from the Garden of Eden, an order for apple pie would be "Eve with a lid on it."