Today’s guest post was written by Fred McPeek.
Here in West Virginia we called the noon time meal Dinner. Dad was a farmer but also worked in a Steel Mill. He referred to his metal lunch box as both his Dinner Pail and his Dinner Bucket. Our evening meal was and still is called Supper.
It’s common here to call a paper bag a Poke. Dad used to say “I need a poke of tobacco”. We called a place to hang clothes a Clothes Press. And we also referred to bed coverings as Bed Cloths.
My mother’s mother died when she was only a year and a half old. My grandpa would take mom out to the fields when he was plowing, etc. Mom said her earliest memory was of grandpa laying her in the grass and telling her older brother to “Get me a CLOUT for this baby.” Merriam-Webster defines CLOUT as dialectal, chiefly British: a piece of cloth or leather: RAG.
My dad always referred to a young red squirrel as a Fairy Diddle.
My family were all hunters and had hunting dogs. Dad always called a female dog a Jyp but never a Bitch.
Mom called a food crock a Stone Jar. She called a green bell pepper a Mango. Wash cloths were called Wash Rags.
Potatoes boiled with their skins were referred to as Potatoes with their jackets on.
Margarine was called Oleo and Butter was called Creamery butter.
Yeast bread was called Light Bread. Store bought bread was known as Sliced Bread.
We called Saltine Crackers Soda Crackers.
Baby chickens were known as Biddy’s.
We call a pillowcase a Pillow Slip.
I remember my mom and grandparents refer to cottage cheese as Smearcase. Regular milk was called Sweet milk.
Kerosene was referred to as Lamp oil.
We always call a soft drink Pop.
My dad and grandpa called a bench that you sat on when you were shaving down a piece of wood a Shaving horse.
A stone used to sharpen knives is a whetstone. Dad always had one in the table next to his favorite chair. His knives were always sharp enough to shave the hair on his arm. Large knives used in the kitchen were all called Butcher knives. Small ones were all called Paring knives.
When I was a child it seemed all Refrigerators were known as Ice boxes or Frigidaire’s. When mom’s home canning did not include pressure canning or a hot water bath she referred to it as Open Kettle as in Open kettle tomatoes. The hot food was placed in hot, sterile jars with hot sterile lids and as it cooled it would seal.
I’ll end with one more although I could probably go on. When we children pushed our patient mother to her wits end she would go out into the yard and cut a thin switch which she referred to as a Keen Withe. Merriam-Webster identifies it as a flexible branch that’s seeming to cut or sting. And Boy Did It!
I hope you enjoyed Fred’s post as much as I did! I love language, especially words and phrases from days gone by.
Last night’s video: Our Favorite Baked Ham Recipe – Simple and Oh So Good!
Subscribe for FREE and get a daily dose of Appalachia in your inbox
My great grandmother used the word ‘lobbered’ milk for what is more commonly known as clabbered milk. Has anyone else ever heard of it called that? I have heard clabbered & clobbered, but never lobbered by anyone else.
My maternal grandmother would make fried dough for her kids & called it (pronunciation, but don’t know how it would spell) dough-gods???? My aunts don’t know why she called it that. They were Indian & French Canadian, so all I can think is that it is some bastardized French pronunciation?
Alot of the old time talk is gone, in my region. Everything is so homogenized it makes me sick.
I have old recipes (I collect old recipe books) that use the term ‘mango’ for pepper. I can remember the very first time I ate a real mango. I was in my teens, in the late 90s and my aunt decided to get ‘wild’ & buy mangoes for some holiday get together. My grandfather served in the Galapagos Islands during WWII and had talked about how delicious mangoes were. Well, we lived in a pretty sheltered, ‘backward’ region where delicacies like a mango were unheard of & unavailable. That is, until a Walmart went in. So she got these fruits to surprise my grandad & served them after supper. We knew nothing of how to tell if they are ripe! It was hard as a rock & tasted just like a pine tree to my untrained tastebuds! I hated it & could not tell what the fuss was all about. He had to point out that he didn’t think they were quite ripe, but I am sure he appreciated the effort/thought. It was years before I was willing to try them again & learned how to tell when they are ready to eat. We didn’t grow up with too much exotic stuff & I had to learn how to really eat when I went away to college near NYC. My grandad could tell where a banana was grown, by the flavor. Guess he ate alot of them down Panama way. LOL
My mom spoke of using clabbered milk in recipes. And my dad used to talk about his little brother Herbert who the family teasingly called “Clabber Ass”. Sometimes when they were men and they were in a humorous mood I would hear them call him that.
My word. . .I have Enjoyed everyone’s input of old words and phrases, many learned from our parents and grandparents. The majority of them are so familiar and like someone said, they are like old friends not seen for a while. We lived close by my grandparents most of my growing up years. I can remember “backing envelopes” (as she called it) for Mamaw and going to the Post Office across the road. I also remember enjoying Little Debbie oatmeal cakes and milk at their kitchen table. You knew they loved you and were proud of you and it made you feel safe.
In the evening Mamaw and Papaw Mullins would sit on the front porch in their rockers; sometimes with a “sup a coffee” or “a chew” watching the cars going up and down the road. Back then there wasn’t much traffic.
In Papaw’s later years, he decided to try his hand at baking. I can see him now in their kitchen with Mamaw’s apron tied around his waist, checking his cat head biscuits (that’s what he called them). I guess Mamaw went along with him and enjoyed the help. Good good memories.
Thank everyone for sharing, I’m looking forward to more reads too.
Since I’m originally from WV, I can relate to many of the words he wrote about. A lot were used by my mom’s people who were country people, but my dad’s people were more what we call city people. Believe it or not, they do talk differently. I still use some of the words or phases of my mom’s people. You can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl!
I agree with Miss Cindy. I find those old words comforting, and somehow have a kinship with anyone who still uses any of those words of bygone days. Some are still used, but so much has changed after television played a large part in changing our entire vocabulary. Sad to say, we quit saying some of them to fit in better in a society we didn’t like near as much. I still have old friends who call things by their brand name with Fred’s example being Frigidaire used for refrigerator. It is music to my ears. I never say pop or poke anymore, and seems I faintly remember when those words were replaced by less interesting and very ordinary words. Baby chicks will always be witties or bitties, and I got attached to many of them growing up. My dad always mentioned boomers when referring to certain squirrels, and he is the only one I ever heard use the word boomer used for a squirrel.
Dear Tipper, I just received my almanac calendar. Thank you so very much!! It was like opening a page back into the early 50’s. My grandparents had one of these calendars on the wall in their kitchen. My cousin Susie & I dearly loved to go stay at Gma’s house. I was the older by 6 mos. Gma was a wonderful fisherman. We lived right near Lake Michigan & there was a long channel that went from out in the Big Lake to a bigger inland lake in our town, of Muskegon, Mich. Fishing off that channel wall was a delight to us little girls. Sometimes fairly large lake freighters would go thru the channel into the inland lake to take things to the factories along that lkae. Susie & I would always need to see Gma’s calendar when we were getting ready to go fishing. She had taught us (before we could read) how to read the signs on the calendar. We would tell Gma if it was a good day for fish or not but no matter we always went. 🙂 Some days we were surprised & caught a big mess or yellow perch. I am going to have some fun tonight looking over my calendar. Thank you so much again. I just love all the videos. I watched Matt, Corie & Katie go squirrel hunting last night & just had to laugh so hard as Katie said squirrel meat was the meat she oved best in the WHOLE world. That girl!!
Thank you Fred!!! Great memories…….I don’t think there was much that I have not used or at least heard of. The one unusual one was the Mango…….always seemed odd to have Bell Peppers referred to as Mangoes but also a Tropical fruit called a Mango! 🙂
I knew most of the words, I found them, somehow, comforting. They are like old friends that I haven’t seen in a while!
Thanx Miss Cindy for doing the video with Corie, nice meeting you. I was born in West Virginia and all of those words and phrases gave me comfort also, because all of my friends and relatives used some of those words. Have a blessed day.
Here in Southeast Kentucky I grew up hearing lunch & supper, paper pokes, bed clothes, wash rags, light bread, sweet milk, pop, whetstone, big knives are called butcher knives & paring knives are called tater knives, Frigidaire, and because of switches I learned how to mind real quick! 🙂
The only one I didn’t know was to call baby chicks “Biddy’s”. We call setting (sitting) hens, especially older ones, biddys. Hence the pejorative “old biddy” for a grumpy woman. If you’ve ever tried to take an egg from under a broody hen you know what I mean.
If you wear a shirt with arms too long so that you can pull your hand up into it you can reach under such hens, slide out your hand and steal their eggs. They will peck at the cloth but don’t often do any damage to your arm.
My parents raised thousands of chickens. They came a hundred to the box. We always called them biddies.
I forgot about headrags. Mommy and the girls wore headrags! Not scarfs or scarves, headrags!
I didn’t know the word noon ‘til I was way up in school. It was (and still is) dinnertime whether I eat or not.
I carried my dinner in a paper sack until pressure from the more erudite of my peers forced me to change it to packing my lunch in a paper bag. FYI French for bag is sac. I don’t know for sure that sack comes from French, but it sounds logical.
Cooking taters without peeling is in their jackets in my world too.
Mommy made butter and buttermilk in a churn jar. It also made kraut and pickles. We had to churn milk by hand in a mason jar if the churn jar was busy.
I never heard of oleo/margarine until I encountered people without dairy cows. I didn’t like the stuff when I did and refused to eat it. I called plastic butter. I still won’t eat it.
No sodas, no pops here. Soft drinks were a rarity in my youth. We did call them sodie pops when I got to be a teenager. Most people who were privileged to drink them called them dopes, cokes or co-colas.
You sit astraddle the shaving horse Fred mentions, not sidesaddle like an ordinary bench.
I am more than familiar with “keen” hickory. I was sent to get my own with the warning “you’d better get a good one or I’ll wear it out on you and send you back for another one!”
I’m typing this in Word with the hope that I can copy and paste it into the comments section with the paragraphs intact. I love paragraphs!
Evenin’ Cousin. I too like paragraphs and mentioned to Tipper that they went missing with the housekeeping done a few weeks back. Thank you for the tip to compose in Word and paste over.
Now, if I can only remember . . .
My dad talked about how you had to put the little packet of coloring into the margarine to make it look like ‘butter’, which my great grandmother never bothered to do, unless it was for company. Its weird because he knew this from his grandmother’s house (where i live now) that was a dairy farm. Why wasn’t she making real butter? And my granddad always ate margarine, too, which you would think growing up on a dairy farm he would hate the fake stuff. Think they must have done some lying to him about butter being bad for your health! I won’t TOUCH margarine!
You know, it’s weird, because I know a lot of dairy farmers & they do NOT make their own butter, cheeses, yogurt…nothing. I have one friend who is a farmer’s wife & I had to teach HER how to make yogurt! They never kept any of the milk for them. It all went to the diary co-op. I pine for a cow in the worst way – a little brown Jersey cow, just for myself! Husband won’t go for it. Only wants to raise hogs, chickens & turkeys. : (
I remember many of the sayings as they were used by my parents and grandparents. The ice box actually held a block of ice that a man delivered every so often. I remember when we finally got hydro put in. I was about 5 or 6.
I’m from Ontario. Just goes to show how alike folks are no matter where they live.
Thank you, Fred! I know ever one of these, but clout. I’m blessed to have Momma’s whetstone and we call wash cloths, warsh rags. Momma was at her wits end many a time and we picked our own switches. We still use these words today and glad to have the heritage we do!! Thank you for sharing yours!
I remember a lot of these old words and I use some of them myself. Reading about them today brings back a lot of memories of hearing them from family members. Thank you, Fred for the post and thank you Tipper for sharing it with us. I also enjoyed last night’s video and the way you and Miss Cindy prepare your ham is the exact same way I do. It always turns out so good! Have a blessed day everyone!!
We just think there’s a big gap in our locations vs terminology.
Growing up in midwest & aging in FL was/is, much the same. One thing I learned to do was adapt to my surroundings. At home, dinner then supper…supper was more of a snack, like fruit, toast & a little milk before bed. At school though, we had lunch & even got cold milk in those 1/2 pint waxed cartons from the on premise’s dairy.
Clothes press? Gotta admit that’s a new one to me for closet, never had enough clothes for hanging until school-aged. Now my aunt had a machine they used to press sheets & pillow slips. I’d press or iron school clothing as I got older, plus mother’s nursing dresses and whiten up her work shoes.
Never knew nor heard the word ‘mango’ till moving to FL. (Yum!) Never tasted real butter till I was middle aged. We called oleo-butter. Yeast bread was just bread, mother would buy from the A&P cause there wasn’t time in her day tween working, taking college classes and sleeping. But she & Dad (when home) would team up in the kitchen for delicious meals. I still love boiled potatoes with the jackets on.
When making potato salad, they’d be cooked that way. Later when observing my m-i-l in kitchen, she’d peel & dice them prior to boiling then add mayo while still warm. Got to admit, it changes things up in way I can’t seem to describe. A friend from So. American once asked if I cared to taste her version of said salad. Rather than the combo normal used, she added frozen mixed vegetables.
Dad would have soda crackers & milk if he was under the weather. Milk was milk! Whether rehydrated cause they found it to be cheaper, or skimmed from the dairy.
Mother never used a switch…but a leather belt. Since we were vegetarian, never had a butcher knife. We did have a bread knife & parring knives. At the moment, I do have a knife similar to a cleaver I enjoy chopping vegetables & nuts with.
Thank you for sharing this article. Some of these terms I haven’t heard. One or two I had forgotten. Many of them I still use.
Your writing takes me back home to Mama and Daddy.
All of these terms are so familiar. I move to Eastern NC for college. The first time I went to eat at my roommates home her mom asked what I wanted to drink. I said sweet milk. They thought I wanted sweetened condensed milk. LOL I had to explain the difference in sweet milk and butter milk. But for the next four years I just called it milk. Here’s one of my ponderings. All my life I’ve heard and said “dead as four o’clock”. But why? Why is four o’clock the dead hour….is it 4 am and no one is awake yet or 4 pm and your dead on your feet from a long days work?
My grandma was born and raised in Indiana and used quite a few of these words. One I had forgotten was mango. What a nice memory.
Hi Annie & same here. I’m a born & raised & aging Hoosier. I remember my folks calling green peppers mangos. Many years ago I was telling an inlaw that my mom used to slice up a mango & put 1 slice in each jar of tomato juice that we were canning. She got such a look of ick on her face! LOL She couldn’t understand why anyone would want a slice of mango in their tomato juice! I told her it was so good & that we kids would fight over who got the mango when tomato juice was poured! I would say I was nearly 30 when I had my 1st real mango, & I laughed & laughed when I realized why my relative thought it was so gross to put in tomato juice!
We had lunch during the week which was a simple meal. Then we had supper in the evening. Dinner was a special full blown
Meal. Think of it as Sunday Dinner, Thanksgiving Dinner, Christmas Dinner, etc. Dinner lasted for several hours.
Love it! Still hear these, but here all soda pops are “ cokes”.
There are 12 of Fred’s words I did not hear in just the same way growing up in KY. But were I to hear them even now I don’t think I’d have any trouble understanding them. Most of them though I know very well. An ethnologist (I think that’s the right word, computer does not like it though) could have a time taking the Dictionary of Appalachian Regional English (DARE) and tracing back to countries of origin. I think Jim Cassada has had some life experience along that line. I’m sure it has been done in some degree but not thoroughly, too big a job, especially considering how DARE itself has more than two lifetimes invested in it, Joseph Hall and Michael Montgomery.
Smearcase and clout were new to me. I’ve heard and used all the rest growing up in TN and NC.
Mom used a switch on me and Dad used a hickory. Both were used frequently. Many times I had to go get that hickory. If Dad thought it was too small he used it and sent me for another. When Dad built our house he planted a peach tree at the end of the porch. On rainy days Mom could reach out for a switch and not get wet. By the time I was a teen there were no limbs left on the house side of that tree.
Maybe they are phrases gone by but most every one I’ve heard all my life and still use! I’ve come to the conclusion I must embrace and be who God Almighty made me to be and that’s just a hillbilly. Often in interactions with big city slickers, they mistake me for a dumb hick and then when my knowledge, experience, strong beliefs and opinions surface, most quickly realize I’m quick on the uptake and quick to fire if I feel slighted. At Vanderbilt the boss came to me and said the chancellor of the university would be getting surgery and I HAD TO DROP EVERYTHING AND RUN TO HIM IMMEDIATELY WHEN HE CALLED. In as calm a way as I could muster, I told them no I was y giving special care over another patient and went on to add if a homeless patient needs me more, that’s where I will be. You should e seen those mouths gape open big enough to swallow a blackbird! He still came onto the unit, but was given a nurse on the other side with me still being in charge… my grandma told me the queen goes to the “ chamber pot” just like everybody else and there’s only ONE special. I’ve always agreed. Here’s to WILD AND WONDERFUL WEST VIRGINIA!
I love it! Your grandma was right. We say- “he puts his britches on one leg at time just like me”.
Thank you Fred. I have heard these words all my life and still use a lot of them. The switch really brings back memories. Got switching fairly frequently because Mom would say that “well you just wouldn’t mind”.
I remember “toting my dinner bucket to Antioch School where my mother was the only teacher. And noon was referred to as “dinnertime”
I’ve known or used all of these except smearcase and mango. Someone though needs to tell me, whatever do you call kitchen knives except butcher knives and paring knives??
I grew up with “butcher knives and pairing knives” too, but I was always confused which knife to use for what. When I started my own family, I started studying Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child and learned that using the right knife for the job at hand makes things a whole lot safer and easier. Knowing the name of each knife helped me to know which knife to use.
The Chef’s knife is the one most common referred to as a butcher knife. It has an 8 inch blade (or so) and is what one would use to chop a big head of lettuce, a watermelon, and any large produce. The carving knife is about 8 inches too, but has a curved blade and is best for slicing a roast. A Utility knife looks the same as a Chef’s Knife, but it’s smaller and easier to use for smaller produce with a cutting board. A true pairing knife only has a blade about 3-4 inches long and is used in hand instead of on a cutting board. A true Butcher knife has a long curved blade and is used for processing a carcass. -Not found in the typical American household. I usually use my Boning Knife, Utility or Chef’s Knife to cube chicken or beef, but I’m sure there is a specific knife for that too.
Hope that’s helpful!
Love it!! That thin tree twig was “a hickory” used to teach me that I’d rather just do as I was told!! We use warsh-rags to clean our faces and a pitcher was something that held the sweet tea or a photo you looked at. But my favorite of all was my grandma Avanell’s “nall” meaning “no.”
Lorie, not that I am anything special but when I look back on my life I thank God for those hickory switches and those doses of hickory tea and parents that cared enough about me and used them to help teach me the proper way to live my life. To go along with this, as Fred said a female dog was either called either a gyp or just a girl dog. I could never call one a bitch without feeling like I was cussing or talking dirty.
In school in County Down you were always threatened with a ‘clout n’ the lug hole’ ( gentle smack on your ear ) by the teacher if you played up in class.
Older unmarried women are still referred to in parts as ‘ auld biddy’s’.
Wow, I still use a lot of these phrases today and never knew they are considered old or backwoods. thanks for the article, I love these posts.
All of my life I have heard and still say many of these words. Just yesterday I bought 2 boxes of sody or soda crackers. I always call a large knife butcher knife and a whetstone, often was called a whetrock by my daddy some other older men. He also kept his Boker brand pocket knives razor sharp with his whetrock and a piece of leather from an old belt attached to a small block of wood he used to hone his knife. I have several scars to prove of the sharpness of his knives, whenI look at them I think of my daddy.
Thank you Fred, you brought back a lot of memories from my grandparents. My grandmother was from Michigan and my grandfather from FL via NC. I can remember which one used what words. There was a difference. I just love words!!
Being from rural PA, I still use many of these terms. Wash rags, bed clothes, pop, supper, oleo, poke, and as a kid my pap raised beagles and was always on the lookout for a great new jyp to breed to his prized male beagle. Ear length was a very important trait. lol. Being raised by my grandparents, I was exposed to many “old fashion” traditions. We were very poor, but I loved my childhood and am so thankful for my upbringing.
I’m familiar with and use most of those words and phrases. A couple, fairy diddle and keen withe are new to me. I love reading and hearing these old regional words.
I remember the ‘old’ words…ice box, front door, and we didn’t have ‘lunch’ til I started school…now my lunch is still lunch, dinner is around 5ish and supper, they used to have ‘supper clubs’ dinner and entertainment, at 9. Things and people will continue to change as youngin’s change it for us….not sure if I like all the changes at my ago. Looking forward to today’s read. God Bless.