spring
A verb variant past-tense from sprung.
1913 Kephart Our Sthn High 283-84 In mountain vernacular the Old English strong past tense still lives in begun, drunk, holped, rung, shrunk, sprung, stunk, sung, sunk, swum. 1939 Hall Coll. Hartford TN When I started my horse, it sprung right up, and I heard it hit the ground two or three times, and it run out of hearing, and if wasn’t one of them [panthers], I don’t know what it could have been. (Bill Barnes)
Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English
—
The past tense usage noted by Horace Kephart in the dictionary entry above is still alive and well in my area of Appalachia, you still hear about painters (panthers) on a regular basis, and Spring of the year-well it’s still happening too.
Yesterday was the first day of Spring. Today we have freezing temperature and snow flurries.
Tipper
Subscribe for FREE and get a daily dose of Appalachia in your inbox
Ohio is getting dumped on today. Not as much up by Lake Erie, but farther south of Cleveland, which is where I live. We got about 6-8″ here in Broadview Heights and schools around here are closed again. We are so ready for Spring!!
We woke up to the biggest snowfall of the season. The weatherman said Louisville and surrounding areas (that’s me) got 12″. It looks more like 8 or 10″ on my wellbox. I wrote a comment early today and mentioned the power would probably go off. And it did about the time I typed my last word. This heavy snow is good for power outages, but so beautiful to look at. I wish I could send every lasting flake of it to Brasstown, NC! I’m done with winter and tired of freezing half to death. My vegetable seeds will never come up, because the sun never shines in Kentucky!
Tipper,
All my brothers liked Snowcream just about as much as I do. The last brother to go be with the Lord use to set a dishpan and another pot outside when he learned that it might Snow. I told him I tried that, but when I put the Snow in the freezer it got hard. His name was Paul Buster and he told me he liked Icecream too. …Ken
Tipper,
My Jeep Cherokee was white instead of black this morning, but after I got it swept off, about 1 1/2″, my road wasn’t bad at all. I came to work and there wasn’t nothing on the ground, just the trees. Some March! If I wasn’t too lazy, I’d have made a bowl of Snowcream before I left. …Ken
I remember hearing the word drunk but I don’t think I have used it as past tense. No one believes me but my father and my brother who were with me and saw a panther’s back end as he/she leaped into dense bushes of a forest just before dusk . You can’t mistake that huge “long” tail. It has been snowing here in south central PA since yesterday and looks like we have about 3 to 4 inches and it hasn’t stopped yet. To say I am ready for SPRING is an understatement.
Snowed hard here in Middle TN late yesterday. Nothing on the ground, though. The sun is shining this morning!
I opened the Blind Pig this morning and there is the word ‘Spring’ and a picture of a spring flower AND it’s snowing. Probably not much snow coming but snow none the less, Tip, just for you I think!
I ain’t seed no snow here yit today but we ain’t been having no springtime temperatures neither. We had them warm days back in February but I ain’t got to open the winders but a couple of days since that. We got a couple of light snows that yunz didn’t git. Botha them surprised me but they wus enough that they called off school at 9:30 fer the firsten and didn’t go at all fer the udden.
Spring arrives on March 20 and so we say the first day of Spring is the 20th. Howevever the first full day of Spring is March 21. My father’s birthday was the 21 so we were reminded of the fact yearly.
We have about 8 inches. I think I’m pretty much done with winter. I’m ready for Spring.
Thanks! This helps. I embarrassed my daughter in front of her mother-in-law (a high school teacher) a couple of years ago by saying “I drunk”. I kinda thought myself I had misspoke somehow. After she corrected me I thought, “Where did that ‘drunk’ come from?” Well, now I know. My Appalachian was showing.
It is important to me to not lose connection with my roots. And I want our kids to know and appreciate them also. To me, those ‘Appalachianisms’ remind me of my Grandma who was so good to me and who the kids never knew. Maybe I need a t-shirt that says “MAIS” and just let everybody wonder what it means.
And about the weather — well it seems March has to get the whole range in. This year it is doing a good job!
You sure got your dhare of snow this year
A few wet snowflakes here this morning too. It seems that spring has not sprung.