9 Comments

1. I’ll have to add, “the all-overs” to my vocabulary! BTW, your sweater is beautiful! Love the colors and how you paired it with a long-sleeve underneath. 🙂

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2. Still use airsh, akin, all day singing, all fired up, all mighty and mighty. All fired up could be angry or excited. I get all fired up (excited) to read your blog and all fired up (angry) when I read the news. I read the news about once a month. I read all your blogs.
   Thanks for another great blog.

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3. “allow’ or “allowed”——-I’m from Georgia, and I use it as “figured” “I figured that’s what you were up to!”

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4. Oh me. Sometimes this p.c., seems to have a mind of its own. I meant to say “you can actually HEAR them sing the notes.”

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5. I don’t remember airish but the others my grandmother used. She may have used that one too and I just don’t remember it. She played the piano and I have her old hymn book of Shaped Notes. She loved to go a few miles across the line to Hamilton, AL., to Sacred Harp singings. I remember my Mother telling me that she and Daddy would take my Grandmother there for all day singings. They sing the notes to hymns. You can google Sacred Harp and it will take you to site where you can actually here them sing the notes. This type of singing is still being carried on with younger people.

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6. Well, let’s see. I know airish, allow, all fired, mighty, all over and akin. But some of them I know as being used in a slightly different way. In SE Ky ‘akin’ will often be heard as just ‘kin’ and is not about family so much as it is about similarity of two things as in ” A cant hook is kinda kin to a peavy. ” A phrase with the same meaning is “liken unto” in making a comparison. ‘Airish’ is a day with off and on chill breeze and is especially suited, as you mention, to the transitional weather of spring and fall when warm and cold yo-yo back and forth. ‘Allow’ is spoken without the “a” as in , “I ‘llow as how Jim will be leavin’ here ‘fore long.” ‘ All fired’ is a way to say, ‘ to the extreme’ or nothing held back but may be said to someone not really “all fired” as a way to say “You’re making more of this than it’s worth. Calm down.”

   Somebody needs to turn DSME into an audible online format with the words pronounced at least. You have made a good start.

   Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a shape note singing chapter in one of those churches in Cade’s Cove along about Easter or during the sorghum making demonstration in October? I can vouch for the acoustics in the Missionary Baptist Church. To my rather dull ear they are great.

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7. I like the expression the all overs, it conveys so much in two little words! It reminds me of a more current expression, well a little more current, it gives me the hebbie jeebies. Spell check didn’t like the hebbie jeebies word but it didn’t offer me any alternative…maybe it’s older than I realize!

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8. All but a very few of the ‘A’ words you spoke of, Tipper, are familiar to me. Allovers’is new to me here is SW Ohio. Grandma was from Adams Co., further south, and she used these words much more than younger folks.

   Thanks for your enjoyable and enlightening posts

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9. Tipper,
   Another blog with a great YouTube video.
   These get me “all fired” up. It’s a bit “airish” here in the Tennessee mountains this morning.
   Thanks for keeping the language alive.

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