If you’ve been reading Blind Pig and The Acorn any length of time you’ve already figured out I’m plumb foolish about Appalachian language. I just love talking about words and phrases that are found in our colorful rich way of talking.
In my latest video I’m sharing a few of those words and phrases. I even got Granny in on the act this time 🙂
I hope you enjoyed the video and that you’ll leave a comment and let me know if you’re familiar with the examples.
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great video -growing up in Haywood Co, NC, I’d say I was familiar with 75% of the words/terms. A few even gave me some credibility to me when I use them and even my own wife/daughter think I made them up.
A funny story from my early days in the country. Joe and Roxie had been over to Knoxville all the day on a Saturday doing their regular “trading,” coming home only to find that someone had been in their house and had gone through all their chester drawers!”
I loved this video! I like when the family helps. People where I grew up called a cap/hat a toboggan, but pronounced it toe’-bogin….
Heard them all but donnick. We say walst for wasp. Thanks for your blog, it makes me feel at home.
Tipper – I was born in Blairsville and raised in Peachtree/Marble. I have just today found your page and I’m an instant fan. Thank you for sharing!!
Enjoyed all of these. I’ve heard commenced and directly. I like language, too.
Great videos! Lots of new-to-me words this time and a few just used different than I’m used to . . .
I was familiar with all of them but the one about “rocks”
Almost all these words are familiar to me from growing up in the southwest Missouri Ozarks, and living in the Arkansas hills. Some of them I learned from my husband’s folks. My mother-in-law made the best green beans, and as a young new wife I asked her how she seasoned them. She started off with, “Well you take a right smart of bacon grease…” I listened and then asked her where I could get “right smart bacon grease.” This story went down into family legends and was told and re-told at family gatherings. I didn’t care. I learned how to season green beans, but never as well as that dear lady did. I miss her.
Frances-I love that story! Thank you for sharing it 🙂
We pronounced it “dreckly”! Sideling–That boy was “sideling” up to that girl he had a crush on! Once a fellow carpenter told my brother something was “helter skelter” on a job.
I loved the video! Youins sound plime blank like me and my family.
I love our talk. I haven’t been home in so long and I miss hearing and speaking good Appalachian.
My uncle’s favorite story is the time my great-uncle sold “punk wood” to a bunch of campers.
The one that I’ve had the most consternation with is “toboggan.” People Off look at you like you are crazy. Even after some 20 years, my wife still struggles with the fact a toboggan is a hat!
What a welcome video this homesick morning.
All those Appalachian words and sayings are very familiar to me – Toboggin, directly, Wasper, pounding, etc. And we ate corn bread in clabberred/butter milk, never “sweet” milk. If Matt were in “yankee” land, which is well north of the Mason-Dixon line, and someone heard him say that he wears a toboggin, they would think he was referring to a sled on his head. “Wasper” is a perfect example of the Appalachians taking a word like wasp and making it their own. And if anyone in that part of the country suspected that the people were gonna make up a “pounding” for them, they would be ready to fight! And Granny got it right with. “Tipper’s gonna take me to Peach Tree directly….I think” “Directly” in my family almost always meant anytime other than soon. And did anyone use the word, “Quar” to refer, in a nice way, to someone who was just a bit different or “off?”
Getting “wasper stung” was definitely a huge childhood fear….of course, the snuff or tobacco spit that came next would fix you right up!
Heard most of them but not donnick.
Had not heard a few like the word for rock, walking on a slope but GOM is a favorite of mine. Directly is also used a lot. So I can call useless politicians old rotten pieces of wood—- the punks!!!! Say hello to your mother—- SHES a treasure and beautiful soul. I can see the kindness and strength in her eyes. I think the twins had a lot of fun in this video—- they’re absolutely adorable young ladies with winning ways. Have a blessed day in NC Pressley/ Wilson clan!
That was plumb fun! I like the way you did it and the music. We said kerplunk but all the others were familiar to me. The bloopers were just the icing on the cake! Thanks for a little extra jocularity this morning.
What fun! I think Chitter got tongue-tied a bit. Somehow I suspect she likes to tease her Daddy and he likes to be teased.
I reckon I knew all of them but “donnick”and now I know it. So I have a name for all those donnicks I’m digging out at the upper edge of the garden. There is a rock rib there just about a foot deep and I raise a crop of donnicks off it every year.
I love these Tipper, I know all these words except donick, it’s not familiar to me. I just love our colorful language. We can even make up words as needed to fit most any situation!
My people use all of them except si-gogglin’. We say “cattywampus.”
We say Cattywampus too!
And I have to ask this: I have a walnut chest that my grandfather made for me. I was a teenager before I found out that it is not a “chester drawers” but a “chest of drawers.” Does anybody else call it chester drawers?
Patricia-we say chester drawers too 🙂
We say chestadrawers!
Am familiar…..hope you are well…am “tollable” this morning.
I’m just fair to middlin’ this morning.
Did fair to middlin’ used to be a grade of cotton?
Phillip-it was 🙂