It’s time for this month’s Appalachian Vocabulary Test.
I’m sharing a few videos to let you hear some of the words. To start the videos, click on them and then to stop them click on them again.
1. Homeplace: a farm or homestead where one’s ancestors settled and built a home and where family members have lived for one or more generations. “He still thinks he’s working the land on his old homeplace, even though he’s been bed fast in a nursing home for years.”
2. Hockey: feces. “Oh bull hockey! I forgot to go by the bank now I’ll have to turn right around and go back to town.”
3. Heathen: heathern. “I told you to quit running around screaming like a bunch of heatherns! If you keep it up I’m going to call your daddy!”
4. Heap sight: very much. “I hope our garden does a heap sight better than it did last year.”
5. Hindside first: backwards “It won’t fit!” “Yes it will if you put it in hindside first.”
All of this month’s words are still common in my area of Appalachia, although I don’t hear the word hockey used near as much as I did when I was a kid. Please leave me a comment and let me know how you did on the test.
Tipper
I remember all these words and phrases from the South Carolina piedmont. As far as the word “hockey”, my daddy always used that word in place of number two. Is that your definition?
Janis-your Daddy used the same definition that we do for hockey 🙂
I worked at Armco Steel in Middletown, Ohio in the seventies. If you were eating a can of peaches some guy from Kentucky would tell you, “That’ll make yer hockey slick.” haha
Bull Hockey, Heathen, and Heap Sight
More than one person heard Matt say “hindsight”, but I heard “hindside.” As is often the case people hear what is most familiar to them although it might not actually be what the speaker said. We often hear “hindsight is 20/20” but that refers to history. Hindside is always in the present. Your hindside is attached to you, often referred to as your shiny hiney, it is hard for you to see sometimes, but easier for your compatriots. Nonetheless it is always back there. Hindside doesn’t qualify for spellcheck either, on most people’s computer, but on mine it does. Now! As soon as I realized it didn’t, I right-clicked it and clicked on “add to dictionary”. Don’t let them do it to us!!
Oh my gosh – you can add words to the computer’s dictionary! Now after puttin’ in all of the missing Appalachian words that computer is finally ‘smart’!
Homeplace I’ve heard and used plenty of times.
I always thought bullhockey was the substitution for another word that would’ve gotten your mouth slapped, so somewhere along the line, someone substituted hockey instead and kept all their teeth safe in their mouth.
Heathen I’ve heard, heathern never; in fact it sounds like a cross between heathen and brethren, like “All your brethren were heathens.” LOL
Heap sight, yep – heard it and have used it that way.
Hindside, never; in fact it sounds a bit like the word hindsight which means if you could go back knowing what you know now, 20/20 hindsight would give you a chance of doing things better.
Storms are said to be coming to most of NC some time tomorrow. Prayers for all in its path.
God bless.
RB
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“Hindsight first” is a new one on me, but the word ” Hockey” reminds me of the time my Mamaw hollering at us boys wrestling in the yard, she’d say yall gonna get Chicken Hockey all over you, if you don’t get up and quit.. the rest I hear often..
Tipper,
There was, back in the day maybe even as it were before my “bare tootsies sat on the grass”, a term describing folks from opposing, competing counties…For instance: “Your shorely not buddin’ up to (him/her) from there. Why all of ’em from (up the river or down the river) are “pure heathens”, kin or not!” I don’t know if “pure” was used for more added emphasis to heathen”! Heathern, was used when he/she moved out of the county. Glad he/she is gone he/she was a “heathern”!
I’m five for five on these, also adding the term I use more than “hindsight first” which is “bassckards”!
Thanks Tipper,
Great post with “no bull”…HA
Tipper,
My “plug-in” Just works about when I do and that ain’t often. I couldn’t listen to your words, but I really like the vocabulary word tests.
I heard “Cabin beside of the Road” by Ray and Pap awhile ago, I love that song. Pap introduced me to one of his other brothers one time, but I don’t know Ray. I understand that him and Pap was real Big on the Radio, years ago. …Ken
Dang Nigh, meaning almost…
Tipper: I would like to make that tour of the cemetery, but I will not be able to make it. HOPE this chilly rain does not spoil the event!
Eva Nell
A heathern is not the same word as heathen as described by the young lady in the video. I use both words. A heathen is as she defined it. A heathern is someone who is annoyingly verbacious rambunctious, animated, gregarious and perhaps precocious but otherwise pleasant. Heatherns are usually children but not necessarily so. “Lord Help Me, I hope that little heathern don’t grow up to be like that!”
I know heap sight but don’t use it as a byword. I usually say whole heap. Sight can have opposite meanings. “Have you ever been out there where he lives? That place is a sight let me tell you!” Does he live in a mansion or at the landfill?
I remember a bunch of us kids dancing through a group of elders singing ♪Hockey-Joycey, Hockery-Joycey, He-she-it in the corner.♫ I lie you not. The grownups could do little other than let it play out because it was everybody’s kids. You know I think I am lucky to be alive considering the heathern I was as a child.
Baccards don’t have a k or w in my way of speaking and always ends in s. I have also heard it pronounced baccurgs. Still do. Fronturds and baccurgs!
My homeplace exists only in my memories. I went back to where is used to be. It’s not there anymore. There is another place there, where strangers now live. I know it is the same place for there stands the shed that Harold and I built from peeled poplar poles 50 some years back. It looks as though it has been neglected and abused a bit but still stands proud as a emblem of what used to be and a reminder of what should have been.
My Gosh! Won’t I ever shut up?
“Heathern” is my favorite of all these. This was a frequent term of my Mother’s, (Why, he’s just an ol’ heathern!),; and I don’t know when I realized that ‘heathen’ was the correct usage.
Tipper, I am familiar with and use all of the words on the vocabulary test as well as the two Jim mentioned. I love our mountain language.
These are all familiar and remind me of sayings I heard growing up. I am wondering if “I’ll swan to goodness” is familiar to anyone? I know the origin and meaning of a lot of our sayings, but not so much this one.
Hindside. I believe I hear that used more for the rump. That reminds me of an old saying. You be careful don’t slip and fall and bust your looking glass.
Hindside. I believe I hear that used more for the rump. That reminds me of an old saying. You be careful don’t slip and fall and bust your looking glass.
Hindside. I believe I hear that used more for the rump. That reminds me of an old saying. You be careful don’t slip and fall and bust your looking glass.
Hindside. I believe I hear that used more for the rump. That reminds me of an old saying. You be careful don’t slip and fall and bust your looking glass.
Another 100% for me. I’m just about a straight A student in the Appalachian Vocabulary class! I know all of today’s words and use most of them. Another alternative to hockey was flitter. “Well flitter, I’ve done it now!” I have always thought that was the funniest word. I have heard hindside first used but my folks would say “back assards.”
“Turn it around back assards and it’ll fit better!”
Fun words today!!
Use them all still today!
You can tell s/he’s from Appalachia by the chain in the back of his/her pickup…
When I see these words in print and think about them for a minute I realize I do use a lot of them. “Heap sight” was the one today that I know I use all the time.
Five for five today, though it has been some time since I have heard any of them. I especially liked ‘homeplace’ because that is just how I think of it, as one word. But the plagued spell checker wants to insist that it be two. And WE know that is not right. It makes me wonder if the idea behind it is not that ‘home’ includes more than just the house to embrace the spring, the garden, the barn, the smokehouse; the whole area that made self-sufficiency possible.
‘Heathern’ was the strongest word of disapproval my Dad used to describe people so he used it rarely.
I think it must make me feel better just to hear words from home even if I don’t focus on them. I react to them subconciously.
I’m familiar with all of them today. In number 5 the words ‘parallel parking’ reminded me of one of my responses to the difficulties in parking. “The only trouble I ever had in parking a car was getting the girl to agree.”
Well of course, Tip, these are all commonly used words and expressions around here. During my working career I worked with a fellow that grew up in upstate New York. Occasionally he would say to me “Cindy, your country is showing.” This would happen when I said something like one of these expressions. These kinds of expressions are so much a part of who I am that I usually didn’t even know what I had said that caused his comment!
Tipper–All are familiar to me, although in two cases variations enter into play.
In the case of “heap sight” I hear the two words used individually more than together. For example, “You’ll be in a heap of trouble when your daddy gets home” or “That’s a sight better job than you did the first time around.”
When it comes “hindsight first” much more common is “bassackwards.” For example, using the same scenario you offer, “No wonder your pants don’t fit. You’ve got them on bassackwards.”
Jim Casada