It’s time for this month’s Appalachian Vocabulary Test.
I’m sharing a few videos to let you hear the words and phrases. To start the videos click on them.
1. Back and forth: to go from and return to the same place repeatedly. “All I’ve got done is back and forthing to the post office. Every time I’d go I’d forget something I needed to mail or a new order would come in.”
2. Big eye: insomnia. “Thankfully I’ve never had the the big eye very often. I need a lot of sleep and I’m usually really good at getting it.”
3. Backie horse: riding piggyback. “Every day when her daddy gets home from work she starts a hollerin for him to play backie horse with her.”
4. Back room: a bedroom. “I believe I’ve got some put up in the back room let me go check.”
5. Bad for: prone to. “This area has to go to where it’s bad for deer. I see’em on the road where they’ve been hit all the time these days.”
All of this month’s words are common in my area of Appalachia, except backie horse. I’ve never heard anyone use that one. Leave a comment and let me know how you did on the test.
Last night’s video: EASY TASTY Blueberry Jam and Candy & 2 Books about Appalachia.
Subscribe for FREE and get a daily dose of Appalachia in your inbox
A friend in Boone forwarded some of Tipper’s videos about her accent. I’m from Kentucky via New York and now Vermont, and that feels like living in a Robert Frost poem. The accent in his “Pauper Witch of Grafton” the way I do it Appalachia style (because I don’t know how a New Hampshire witch sounds), inspired me to put up a Youtube of it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VivqmFPBozw
This is for you, Tipper:
We never had a back room but Grammaw did. It was a bedroom that was never used. It was packed full of the “good stuff” that she had accumulated over the years. Kids weren’t allowed to go in there and not many adults neither. Grammaw always warned us that if we went in there something would get us. I believed her when I was a kid so never ever even tried to go in. I wouldn’t even stick my head in when she was in there.
My mother-in-law(from New Jersey) LOVED to tell a story about when she was a teenager in the 1940’s and went to visit family in the eastern Pennnsylvania mountains. Her aunt went to work one day and asked
if she would mind fixing mangos for supper. When she asked “What are mangos?” Her aunt said, “Now I know your mother fixes stuffed mangos!” Eventually, the girl went to the market and discovered they were bell peppers, and therefore fixed them for supper.
I grew up calling bell pepper mango too. It wasn’t until I was grown, married and moved to Texas from Cincinnati, that I learned what a Mango really was. I never could figure how bell pepper was called mango because they were absolutely nothing alike.
Love your vocabulary tests. We say back room also. Backie horse is new to me.
Backie horse is new to me. The rest we use, the back room was the one farthest from the sittin room.
My gosh, I didn’t know we all talked alike. I didn’t see any that I have not heard and/or used and some I still do. It is wonde4rful to know how much we all have in common. Growing up, on another subject, our front door nor back door had a lock, therefore you did not need a key….boy has time changed. God Bless.
I hadn’t heard backie horse, but the rest are familiar. I always say forth and back because you can’t come back until you first go forth.
My mother-in-law always said back room referring to the bedroom and most all my family referred to the front room as the living room or the “sittin room” as they like to call it. Backie horse is a new one to me. Always called it piggy back. Have a great day everyone!
Never heard the ‘big eye’ before but will start using it! Such a descriptive word that leaves no mistake. We also always called the living room ‘the front room’ always. Until —-don’t remember when we changed. I didn’t even remember ‘front room’ until this post but my Mom always said it – raised in Ashville. Don’t think I’ve heard or used it since she passed.
I’ve not used or heard Big eye or Backie horse. I’ve heard all the others and use them, with the exception of back room for a bedroom. With all the different style homes I’ve lived in it would confuse even me…lol
Got all 5 but I mostly heard piggyback or horseyback instead of backey horse.
My ma always said back room (bedroom) and front room (living room).
I have heard and used them all except backie horse. Back room is a good one that I don’t hear very often these days.
Only back room (for the bedroom farthest from the front of the house).
I’m a 5 for knowing ’em but as usual have no memory of recently having heard and still less of when was the last time I used one of them.
About the “back room”, in the house I grew up in, in really cold weather we’d hang quilts in the doorways to block the heat out of rooms we didn’t have to use. Then they really became back rooms. In those old uni insulated houses, the rooms furthest from the heat never got warm and could be used to store pumpkins, squash, etc.
I do use ” bad to”. I’m bad to save bag ties and paper towels that haven’t gotten wet; just fold ’em up and stick ’em in my pocket. I’m bad to save popsicle sticks to. I say I’m going to use them to mark rows but when I try it they turn so dark in the weather that if I write on them it can’t be read.
I carried our kids piggyback. They both loved it. That was about half a lifetime ago.
I use a Sharpie Black Permanent maker to write on my popsicle sticks to identify my plants. So far no problem. Another suggestion I have been meaning to try is to use 4-5 inch pieces of the slats from damaged plastic mini blinds (light colored ones, of course) to mark the plants. They are easy to cut with scissors so you could make a point on the dirt end to make it easy to stick in the ground or a pot. One set of broken mini blinds would make a quite lot of markers!
Tipper, I’m so glad I found you! I grew up in eastern Ohio in the foothills of the Appalachians. Growing up we called bell peppers mangoes and I wondered if you’d ever heard them called that. I didn’t even know those were a fruit back then so thought nothing of it until I moved into a city.
Love your content!!
Tami-so glad you enjoy what we do 🙂 I have read about peppers being called mangoes but never heard it myself 🙂
I have not heard “backie horse” or “big eye” before. Sadly, I have been having a lot of big eye the last 6 months. Except my eyes aren’t big the day after, they are pretty much small from being mostly closed as I walk around in a sleep deprived fog. : ). I use “back and forth”, “back room”, and “bad for” pretty much weekly, if not most days. I always enjoy your vocabulary posts! Thank you!
Donna. : )
I know about the back room and big eye…..hope you are well! Tollible here..
Backir jorse is a new one on me too. The rest is very common in my family. Although we say bad to instead of bad for
I still hear and use all those expressions except Blackie horse. Piggy back is the common expression here.