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. Mark: to cause an unborn child to have a physical mark from an experience or occurrence to the mother during her pregnancy. “She said a dog bit her mother on the leg when she was carrying her and that’s why she has that birthmark on her leg.”
2. Marry off: of a child: to get married and leave the parental home. “I reckon all their children are married off except for that one daughter.”
3. Medder: meadow. “I saw a whole herd of deer in that medder over by Frank’s the other night. There must a been 50 of ’em.”
4. Mislick: an errant strike with a hammer, ax, or other implement or in life. “If I have to hammer a nail, I always make a mislick and hit my hand that’s holding the nail.”
5. Mizzle: a fine misty rain. “When I got up this morning it was mizzling rain but the sun soon came out and it quit.”
All of this month’s examples are fairly common in my area of Appalachia. The one I hear the least is medder.
Hope you’ll leave a comment and tell me how you did on the test.
Last night’s video: Putting Up Cabbage: Canned Coleslaw & Granny’s Kraut in the Jar.
Tipper
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I use them all but mizzle.
Love the way everyone has regional languages. Life would never be the same if everyone in any region spoke and had accents all alike. Boring! My late mother in law had a way of saying “of a morning, as in, of a morning we’re getting more rain. Others would say “In the morning we’re getting more rain. I hope I said it right. Anyway I loved hearing my MIL talk. She had a way of saying some things different from the area we were from. She was born and raised, I think , in Arkansas. Later everyone.
Mizzle is a fog so heavy that you get wet just walking through it but none of it collects in your rain gauge. It’s like being inside a cloud. I thought my mother invented the word but apparently not.
Lovely, Tipper. Thank you.
In the videos of your family I heard the echo of my mother’s speech.
All of them are familiar except mizzle. We always say for a light rain, it’s drizzling.
I have heard marry off, but not any of the others.
All of these are common in NE TN except middle. We say drizzle??
Have you ever heard sheets, pillowcases etc called “bed clothes “? My good friend uses that phrase, passed on from her mom
Congrats on the new baby- grandma is the best job ever!!!
Marry off is the only one I’m familiar with.
I’ve never heard mizzle or medder. My favorite M word I grew up hearing and saying is made-o for tomato. I don’t think I have ever heard your readers call them anything except maders. Maybe the word is only common where I grew up. I must have been a teenager before I knew made-os had another name.
I know them all. I use them all except meadow/medder. I’ve read meadow in books and heard medder from a very few older folks but I can’t relate either. What does meadow describe that isn’t covered by lot, plot, or field (plowed or resting)? Lawn, pasture, thicket, opening, bald, scald? Maybe prairie or plain but those are far far way from Appalachia?
I don’t know what you’re talking about!!
One familiar to me is someone who is angry is spittin’ fire, meaning using angry words. Up here in the north, instead of medder, feller, and winder, we say medda, fella, and winda. Like Appalachia, we do say holler for a valley between mountains and hills, and we also holler at people to get their attention.
The word “marked” used as a verb was a word used frequently by my daddy (and others) to describe a distinct characteristic passed on by parent or grandparent. A prime example is the fact that my brother and I have almost identical birthmarks on the exact locations of our right calves of our legs. We are almost ten years apart in age. If this ever came up in conversation, my daddy would comment, “Hilda (my mother) marked them boys good”. One of our neighbors down the road had four sons. They all closely resembled their daddy. I can remember my daddy saying to me once, “Johnny, the father, marked all of his boys good”. I hear this word use to this day and I use it too.
Married off is still used frequently .
I have never heard mizzle used. Many in these parts say “mistin’ ” rain” to describe those conditions.
“Married off” I’ve heard and used all my life.
Meadow is a word I have never heard spoken or used in my life by any person around here with one exception. I heard an older farmer friend use it to describe an Elk hunting trip he had gone on in Colorado . He went in great detail to describe the beauty of these meadows. I knew what he was explaining, but thought it was an odd word for this man to use and I wanted to hear him describe his definition of a meadow so, I asked him what one of those meadows was like. He replied, kind of like a pasture, but naturally occurring. This is how I would have described one too if I ever saw one I imagine.’
I have heard and probably said mislick, but we say, “he got a bad lick on it” or “he hit it a bad lick”.
Thanks for sharing. I find it amazing that the vast majority of our Appalachian language, with the exception of dialects and subdialects (my grandmother referred to as “broads” (pronounced bro’d) is fairly universal in remote pockets of the mountains/hills from south Pennsylvania to northeast Mississippi.
Never heard mizzle (evidently spell-check hasn’t either). It drizzles here. I finally mowed yesterday after at least 5 weeks. Many huge corn fields around here are partially or mostly brown. There are a few that are green. A big storm barely missed me last night. We are having heat warnings. I’m so thankful for air conditioning.
My mother had 8 kids; 4 boys and 3 girls. Her 1st son Art only lived 3 hours and was “Marked (she believed) on his forehead with a birthmark. When she was pregnant, her and dad went to the Sevierville Fair and two men got into a fight. One broke a beer bottle and cut the other man. We were never around anybody drunk. It scared mom so bad. She put her hands up to her face and when Art was born, he had a mark on the same spot. I have heard all these sayins except we call rain drizzling. Be blessed. Lucky wants to watch all the Pressley Girls videos every night before he heads to bed. They are doing a great job
I think we have seen all that you have made more than twice. I know you are enjoying those babies. All children are a gift from God. Please pray for my family. We have some upcoming surgeries and test. Too many things to mention. God knows all about them. We love and pray all is well in the neck of your woods.
Drama-I will keep your family in my prayers.
I’m familiar with all of those words except mizzle. I may just have to add it to my vocabulary.
I was unfamiliar with mislick and mizzle.
Never heard muzzle or miss ick. All other words I am quite familiar with. I have the exact flowers you have in that photograph above. They were lovely indeed and the leaves so beautiful UNTIL the water line got dug. Now they’re but a memory, but I do have water into the house and if I live I can try again next year!!! Love to all and hang right in there like hair in a biscuit!!!
My grandmother was “marked” on her right big toe. When my great grandmother was carrying my grandmother, her two younger brothers were teasing a ground hog they had caught and tied up on the front porch. They were bare foot and I guess one of the boys had his foot too close to the ground hog and it bit his big toe on his right foot and wouldn’t let go of it. My great grandmother had to take a poker and knock the ground hog in the head before it would turn lose of his toe. It was a bloody mess. Everybody was telling her not to look at the toe because it would mark the baby. Well, sure enough, when my grandmother was born she had a crimson birth mark on her right big toe. I saw that birth mark all my life because Grandma never wore shoes in the summer.
I’ve heard them all except “mizzle” and “medder.” I thought of a word my Ky family used for tobacco, “baccer.” When entering some of their barns you would see lots of it hanging to dry. They sold some and smoked and chewed some. I remember my parents using “mislick” a lot.
We had a downpour for about half an hour yesterday afternoon here in southern Virginia. So thankful for the rain. Tipper, I really enjoyed watching you put up the kraut and coleslaw yesterday. Daddy used to use a crock for our kraut, but I’ve never seen cabbage put up for coleslaw. I plan on trying that recipe as soon as I get enough cabbage together.
Never heard “mizzle”. But more rain pert nigh hyer.
Mizzle was new to me, but is a wonderfully descriptive term for a morning mist and a drizzle of rain in the mountains. And two old groaners about marking babies popped into my head when I saw that this morning. One guy said he was marked when his mother was scared by a bear. He said he was born barefooted. Another said his mother got upset playing an old 78 rpm record that skipped in one spot, but it had no effect…no effect…no effect…
I hear the first two a lot and my dad always said medder. I have never heard Mislick or mizzle. We always say drizzle too.
5 for 5 today! Boy, did “mislick” ring a bell. (Better stand on the offside of the tree if chopping knots with the grain!) Had not heard in many years but was ‘an echo from the past’ as that phrase from “Precious Memories” has it. As to “mizzle” that is a combination of mist + drizzle rain. Without the mist it becomes just drizzle. Without the drizzle or the mist it’s fog. Then there are “meller” apples and “bellering” bulls (or some people). Another M word that comes to mind is “mislaid”. I mislaid a pair of safety glasses the other day and found them with the lawnmower. Sad.
Everything is familiar to me except mislick. I like to use “mizzle” but I never heard it until I was an adult, then from a TV meteorologist.
I have heard all of them except mizzle, we say drizzle. I think back to the days when I cut my Daddy’s firewood and would split it with an axe or go devil that had wooden handles, mislick would sometimes mean a broke handle! Last night about 9 o’clock we finally had a blow down the corn thunderstorm. I passed a large several hundred acre corn field yesterday that is being cut for silage because of the lack of rain this year, this is just one one many fields this farmer planted this year.