Despite being five generations removed from my Tennessee ancestor, I still grew up learning to use many of those words from my mother. Even though I am in my 70’s, I still “slip” and say warsh for wash, rench for rinse, and fixin to do something. I learned from my mother that a small piece of bacon fat would draw out a sliver of glass or metal. I was an adult before I discovered an alcoholic wasn’t pronounced alkyholic. In fact many words had an “o” replaced by “y. ” My mother always called prairie verbena (small lilac-color wild flower) “Sweet William.” Before she died, I asked her about that name and she said that was what her mother called the flowers. Even though I had googled it years earlier, I had found nothing. About a year ago, I bought a book about North Carolina language, and one of the entries was “Sweet William” for the flower. Now when googled, I discover wild Blue Phlox is also called Sweet William in Missouri and even Dianthus have the Sweet William name.
—Pat Gordon 2021
Granny has always called dianthus blooms Sweet Williams. As for the other things Pat mentioned I have heard them often as I was raised up here in Brasstown. Pap and Granny both said alky-hol.
I love the connection Pat has to our language even though her family has long since been gone from the area.
Last night’s video: Summer Supper Straight From Garden: Beets, Carrots, Tomatoes, Green Beans, Onions & Cucumbers.
Tipper
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My great grandfather Elmer Morton Patterson (1897-1965) was born in a little community called Public in Pulaski County, Kentucky, and your post reminded me of a poem that he wrote about his home state called “When The Wild Sweet Williams Are Blooming.”
“I’ve been this wide world over,
I’ve been to the east and the west,
There is a place called Kentucky,
The place that I love best.
With the beautiful hills and valleys,
The fields of tobacco and corn.
That is the place called Kentucky,
The state in which I was born.
I know it is June in Kentucky,
When the mocking bird sings in the hills,
And the moon shines over the mountain,
And I hear the whip-poor-wills.
When the wild Sweet Williams are blooming,
It seems like Heaven to me,
When the wild Sweet Williams are blooming,
It is there I am longing to be.
From the banks of the mighty Ohio,
To the Mason-Dixon line,
From the banks of the great Mississippi,
To the trail of the lonesome pine,
With her rolling bluegrass meadows,
Her beautiful mountains and streams,
That is the place called Kentucky,
The beautiful land of my dreams.”
I’m not sure when my great grandfather wrote this poem, but he moved to Indianapolis around 1943. I think maybe he was feeling a little homesick when he wrote this.
Joshua-beautiful poem! Thank you for sharing it 🙂
Joshua… I’m a resident Kentuckian, born and raised;your great grandfathers’s poem expresses the same sentiment I feel for my state, all 120 counties of varied terrain and beauty, with it’s unique Burly tobacco, Bourbon, Thorough Bred Horses raised on beautiful farms to run in the Ky. Derby, Bluegrass(due to much lime in the soil) in Central Ky.corn fields and course the pretty wild Sweet Williams growing along side the back country roads.
Oh how I love reading the comments about the Appalachian dialect! Growing up in Atlanta, I spent much of my youth at my Appalachia grandparents’ farm thirty miles north of the city. Yes, alky-hol, rurnt for ruined, least ‘un for youngest, heerd for heard, fixin’ to for about to, haint for haunt, booger man for the devil, holler for hollow, askeerd for scared, and so much more. As common with mountain folks, they also pronounced certain words differently, changing an “a” at the end of word or name to the “y” sound. Granddaddy’s sisters were named Leilar and Georgie, which I thought were odd names when I was a child. When I became an adult, I learned they were actually named Leila and Georgia, beautiful names! My great-grandmother, from Gilmer County Georgia, was named Dona, but called Donie. She married at the age of 14 to a man 32. I imagine a girl that age back then was well equipped to manage a home and care for children. She was a midwife in the area where I live now in NW Georgia and oversaw my 17 year old grandmother giving birth to Daddy who was a premie and born blue. Grannie touched his lips with moonshine and he took a breath and lived to be strong healthy 80 year old. I am thankful and proud of my mountain heritage! Thank you Tipper for the wonderful information you share here! God bless you and your family.
I still say warsh and rench here in Southeast Kentucky. 🙂
I have often wondered if my parents have roots in the Appalachian Mountains because so many of the pronunciations of words, phrases, food and traditions are very similar to what you write about and share in your videos. I also think that is why it seems like being with family to listen to your videos because there are so many similarities and I will say y’all sound like my people and those who I grew up around.
It has been Sweet William all my life in Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas.
My mama always called the beautiful flowers in your photograph Sweet Williams, and so do I. She shared some of hers with me many years ago. I had them growing for a long time. I find myself saying “libel to” a lot.
I live a long ways from Appalachia in New Brunswick Canada and we always called dianthus “Sweet William.” Even garden centers here will include that name on their plant identification tags as it is that common. Nothing smells as lovely as Sweet William.
Love reading your entries every day, and although there is a fair distance between us, we cook and grow and harvest in very similar ways and very similar things. I have grown okra but only for the beautiful blooms as we don’t really have to the climate to have a successful crop. The lengthy cooking process for green beans is also a bit puzzling for me, but I think it is because the green beans we tend to grow wouldn’t stand up to that long cooking time. Keep up the good work of keeping us all in touch with each other.
Glad to learn the real name of the flower for Sweet William as I didn’t know any other name for it. We say fixin to do something all the time here and I well remember my mother-in-law saying rench for rinse. She called all refrigerators, fridgeedairies.
I have some Sweet Williams in my yard near our little pond. I love them. I bought them b/c my Granddaddy’s name was William (“not Will, or Bill, or Willy or Billy”) and they remind me of him when I see them. Sweet memories! Much love to you today! Jane in SC
Oh lord. My folks came from Kentucky and Tennessee to the Kiamichi mountains of Oklahoma 4 generations back. I grew up with fixin to, over yonder, lible to, mocksakins, warshmanchine, Jasper, lands’ sake, lawzee me, yea-hoo, town car, Ind’ins, and many others that Tipper has covered with her dictionary. I find it amazing that the speech of the home place (that’s one) persisted and spread, like the people, 700 miles or more. Passed down to me. All my folks are gone now, but I find myself using more of that dialect as I grow older. I reckon (another one) I do it hoping my daughter will pick up some of it, maybe spread it to her kids, so that the voices of her kinfolk (another) will continue to be heard.
Mom was well known for growing some of the prettiest flowers in town. Sweet Williams and Scarlet Sage were grown in huge beds without a weed in sight. She always claimed the old-timey Sweet Williams were different than Dianthus and she was probably right. The Sweet Williams mom grew had a wonderful fragrance that could be smelled while sitting on the front porch. I often plant Dianthus hoping to bring back the memories but the ones I plant are fragrance-free.
My grandparents were born in the Arkansas Ozarks and in later life moved to North Mississippi to be closer to us. I grew up hearing all of the words Pat Gordon mentioned.
Oh, how I’d love to hear again my Ma ask…”Sister, will you help me warsh and rench my hair?”
Yes Ma, I’ll be glad to.
My family was in N.C., for a time as they later moved on down to East TN and N.E. MS, and my Grandmother always said warsh for wash and rench for rinse. We all used the phrase fixin to do something. And I sure did know that a piece of fat would draw out a splinter, etc.:)
Tipper, I know you have had a problem with squash bugs and I hope you are getting rid of them. I’ve never had a problem till this year and it looked like my zucchini was almost dead yesterday and the yellow squash didn’t look great either. I’ve been using tape and killing those little bugs I see on them but the lady who cuts my hair has a huge garden and is also a farmer’s daughter. She said if it looks like the leaves are dying pull the root and cut the stem up from it and I will find the culprit. A moth lays an egg that turns into a worm that enters thru the bottom of the stem and eats the plant from the inside. I pulled the root last night and cut into the stem and she was correct as there was a big fat worm, kind of looked like a grub. Needless-to-say, I’m on my way this morning to get two new plants.
Oh and thank you, Corie and Austin for the walk in the woods with Woodrow. It is a beautiful creek and beautiful place.
I love all the Appalachian words, I use them all the time, heard them my whole life from my Mother and Daddy, Grandma & Grandpa Prince. Often when I say a word or phrase, it makes me smile, I can hear them saying it in my head.
I grew up always knowing the beautiful little flowers as Sweet Williams, it wasn’t till many years later that I knew the proper name. I still call them Sweet Williams, they are so pretty & smell so good. I can just hear my Mother and Grandma talking about the Sweet Williams over on the mountain home. They will always be Sweet Williams to me.
Mama had Sweet Williams in her flower bed.
My mother had a love of flowers that was passed down from her mother. She used Sweet Williams, Flags (irises), pinks (a type of tall phlox) and Thrift (what I now call creeping phlox) and others.
Mother lived in a coal mining camp in Virginia when she was little. Her mother would plant as many flowers as she could to beautify the place. Mother told me of an incident when her mother was out tending her flowers and a man, walking by, commented on the beauty of them. Without a thought as to how it sounded, she replied, “You should see my four-o’clock-bloomers!” The man started laughing and her mother turned red and went into the house.
Rita-that is so funny 🙂
lol… I know she was just mortified, why women in her time was embarrassed to even hang their bloomers on the clothesline outside to dry on washday.
Speaking of bloomers, my grandma told a funny story on herself of when she was young, her bloomers were homemade out of the cloth from feed sacks and had a drawstring to hold them up and when she went to her first dance and was asked to dance,her drawstring came loose and her bloomers/drawers fell to her ankles she said she jerked her bloomers up as fast as she could and ran out of there!
Hmmmm so language gets handed down through a family (as the Bible says) “unto the third and fourth generation”. I find that very interesting. Other posts here have shown that regional languages get mixed as folks travel, relocate, marry and pick up words and phrases from media. The result is both complex and rich but the origins get first hazy then lost. Someone posted here once about a family member telling them “their Appalachian (or hillbilly maybe?) was showing”. Not a bad thing I think, especially when deliberately used as a memorial of a family member. BP&A has made me recall sayings of my Dad’s, my Mom’s and my Grandma’s I would not have without Tipper, commenters and the DSME. I’m grateful.
I figured out when I was younger that Sweet Williams were Dianthus. But somehow I only thought the varigated blooms were called “Sweet Williams” and the solid color ones were called “Pinks”. Both sets of blooms have edges that look like they were cut out with “pinkin’ shears”.
You continue to make me appreciate my ‘southern’ heritage even if it a little mixed with others.
“Fixing to” was first reduced to “fixin’ to”, then “fidna” and more recently I’ve heard “fina” used by young people: “I’m fina smack you off that cheer!”
Scrapings from raw potatoes and charcoal mixed with something like Vaseline or aloe vera gel will also draw out splinters, glass or briars. Just put some on the spot & cover with a bandage for a while.
It’s always been “winder” for window and “wrench” for rinse with lots of my East TN people. And my mamaw and papaw always said “study” for steady, as in “Study this ladder for me while I get your frisbee down from off the roof.” For some reason, I had it in mind that Sweet William was another name for Yarrow. Now I know better.
My father was raised in southern MO, and used “rench,” “warsh” and “zinc” (sink). He also said “earl” for “oil” which I never understood until we moved next to a German family who explained that’s how it’s pronounced in their home language. Missouri had a lot of German immigrants back in the day. I agree with Pat that Sweet William seems to be a name for wild blue phlox here in MO. Every one of my southern friends uses “fixin’ to”. I haven’t heard “cheer” for chair in MO or Tennessee, where our oldest daughter’s family lives, but I hear it a lot in TN as in something being “right cheer” (right here). My grandfather was raised in Knoxville, and it makes me happy to have these language connections to family even though I grew up so far away.
Donna… my Mother would say zinc for sink. I remember in school my teacher correcting me on the pronunciation of the word sink when I used zinc,(I remember thinking that I believed my Mother over her lol) it is good to now see that others have used that word zinc for sink too and it actually did have an origin. She also pronounced the word yellow as yillow; still wondering that one.
Apparently, once upon a time there must have been a whole slew of fellers named WILLIAM who were as handsome and sweet as flowers. That’s why there are so many flowers called that. Now notice there’s no sweet Dan or Sweet John ( for example) in flowers anywhere that I’ve heard. I too once had a sweet William many moons ago when I was 16. I did think he hung the moon. All these years later- not so much! He’s a rotund “ALKYHOLIC” clown of extreme excess living outside Charlotte bragging about his 4000 feet house-BIGGUM DEALUM. I got a garden and truck! The bigger they are the harder they drink and fall… God bless all of you and your gardens and flowers and if you’re William here’s a hello for you and a blessing too. You’re as dandy as a flower you are!!!
My mom always had Sweet William and I didn’t know any other name for it. She also said rench for rinse and my children would say, “what did she say.” She and my dad were born and raised in Toccoa Georgia and a lot of their words sound like the ones y’all say.
I do find myself saying I’m fixin to do something. I’m sure there are other words and phrases that slip into my vocabulary that I grew up hearing my parents say. I grew up in California while my parents grew up in North Carolina. It just shows how language does travel from one region to another.
When my sisters and I are talking together and are putting off doing something, we’ve been known to say “I’m a fixin’ to commence to gettin’ a move on here after awhile.” Someday, we may outlive others who will understand our sense of humor in the way we talk, but not yet!
I know the popular flower nickname Sweet William but didn’t know which flower it was for. I see ones that look like the photo in the UNC Arboretum. I’ll have to see if they have a label.
I was probably a teenager before I knew that “okry” was spelled with a -A on the end. Sody-pop and Santy-Clause were common in my growing up in western Kentucky with parents from Ozark Mountains area of Arkansas. I think many of my classmates had grandparents or farther back who’d originated in the Appalachians. I heard alky-hol and warsh some but not in my immediate family. “Cheer” for chair was something I heard from classmates — is that an Appalachian thing?
Elena-cheer for chair is very common here 🙂
Our family said “chair” but used all the other common variant pronunciations mentioned today. A lady in Augusta, Georgia, who appeared on tv in furniture commercials sold “sofas and cheers” until one day she began using the corrected “chairs.” I’ll bet she had mountain connections.
Today I learned that Sweet William is actually dianthus. I actually had to go look this one up, and sure enough, Sweet William is just some sweet nick name someone gave to the beautiful dianthus flower. I know for a fact that I’ve bought “Sweet William” seed packets, probably 20 times or more, thinking this was the actual name. For me, however, dianthus will always be Sweet William. Same with Black-eyed Susans, which are Rudbeckias, but not to me. Also, in my of the woods, most people refer to alcoholics as alkies.
We call the dianthus Sweet Williams. My grandparents have always said “warsh” and they say “kittle” instead of “kettle”. I never picked up that way of speaking but I do say some of their figures of speech like “fixin to” and “libel to”
I say some of these same words and probably a lot more without realizing it. I have often used a piece of salty fatback/side eat to draw out briars, metal, and splinters. I haven’t thought about it but realize I say alky- hol. I often say I am fixing to do something. I am fixing to cut about 3 acres of grass later on this morning after the grass dries up. I will ride, my son will have to do the trimming, I am no longer able to do the trimming.
Yesterday I said we haven’t had a lot of rain from these cloudy days, despite an 80% chance of rain and flood warnings at one time yesterday, I had one “devil beating his wife shower” yesterday morning and a 5 inch rain -5 drops 5 inches apart around dusty dark yesterday. I am glad for every drop we get after a month of hot dry weather.
Fixing to is a part of my language as is like to. In high school I once told a guy visiting from Chicago that I like to have jot that guy. his response was if you liked to why didn’t you. I am from Florida. 5 generations. I haven’t heard like to here in NC at all
“liked to” is very alive and very well here in my part of North Carolina. “I liked to uh died when I opened the nightstand drawer and found it was full of corn.” We say “liked to uh” instead “liked to have”.
I heard “like to” as a kid from my folks all the time. You know, “reglar.” Eastern Oklahoma, but they came from KY and TN.
Daddy has a cousin Ray who liked to partake of the forbidden fluid. Us teenagers were well aware of his problem and nicknamed him Uncle Alky.
Sunday afternoon was the time when the men would gather to tell stories, sing and cut one another’s hair. One day Uncle Alky drove up all red faced, parked his little car and went inside. As soon as Uncle Wayne got him wrapped up in the cape a bunch of us big old boys picked up his car and turned it 180º. You should have seen the struggle when he came out to get in it to leave. He went to the passenger side and tried to open the back door. Of course the chosen point of ingress would have opened like a suicide door. His brain was already working in scrambled mode then this happened! He walked around the car several times scratching his head before he discover the door that would let him sit down and drive off, straight back the way he came in.
I don’t remember the exact make and model of Alky’s car but it looked a lot like Mr. Bean’s car only it had 4 doors.
PS: We were nice kids. We never call anybody by the nick names we used in our inner circle and certainly not to their faces.