One of the things I’ve enjoyed when I head to the hills for a new story is being able to hear my characters talking. I grew up country. Not mountain. But many of the expressions I’ve come across when researching for my Appalachian stories rang with familiarity for me because I’d heard them pert-nigh (pretty near) all my life.
I had a message from Karen today. She’d just finished reading The Song of Sourwood Mountain. She had liked seeing some of the mountain lingo in the story. She said she’d never forgotten an elementary teacher telling a friend who had said pert-near that she should say “pretty near” instead. I suppose the way I had always heard it with the nigh instead of near was the same. Somebody would ask if supper was ready and the answer might be pert-nigh in my house. Or that we had pert-nigh finished this or that chore.
Here are some other words I found while researching mountain lingo that echoed from my own growing up years. If a person said something was sorry, they weren’t talking about any kind of apology. They were talking about a person or thing having little or no value. If you had something hidden away, you might say it was in the ‘tator hole. That’s where mountain people kept their potatoes and other root vegetables when they didn’t have a cellar. Just a place under the cabin floor.
I certainly knew what the “wish book” was. My sister and I looked forward to getting that Sears Roebuck Christmas catalog in the mail so that we could start dreaming of the things we might hope to find under our cedar Christmas tree. We did more dreaming than getting, but dreaming can be fun.
I’ve heard people say a shed was slaunchwise too. That meant it was leaning. But other things could be slaunchwise too. Plenty of times I heard this or that adult say things were in a gaum. That was a mess you hoped you wouldn’t have to fix. It would be better to have to go pick a little jag of berries. A jag was a small amount but for some reason I always remember folks adding the little in front of jag.
If something needed hammering or chopping, a person might make a lick with a hammer or axe. Of course, if a person would rather laze around in the shade instead of hitting a lick of work, they might get talked about.
Poke is one of the expressions I’ve used in all my Appalachian stories, but it wasn’t one I heard often when I was a kid. A poke is a small bag in mountain lingo. Another I liked using in my stories – I think I had Perdita Sweet saying it in Along a Storied Trail – was “poor do” for what she had to eat. That was boiled cornmeal. My mother always called it mush, and I liked it with some butter and salt. But we always had plenty of better fixin’s for dinner and supper than Aunt Perdie had when things weren’t going well for her.
The same as those in the mountains, we had plenty of varmints out on the farm trying to catch our hens or eat our garden produce. At times, I heard someone call a person who had done something bad as an onery varmint.
I said somebody was onery the other day to a 12 year old and she thought it was the funniest thing. She’d never heard the word. Guess nobody had ever told her she was onery if she was reluctant to go feed those chickens or carry in the wood. I’m thinking she’s never had the pleasure of doing either of those chores.
In my mountain books, I’ve talked about tides, mountain lingo for floods. Flower gardens were blossom patches and vegetable gardens were sass patches. One of the expressions I loved to use because of how poetic it sounds is “the edge of dark” for late afternoon.
I’m fixing to (another country expression for getting ready to) start researching for a new mountain story. I’ll have to create some new people to do my mountain talking for me.
What country/mountain expressions do you say or hear?
Comments 16
I grew up in the foothills of the N.C. mountains. I remember at church after the Christmas service everyone would be given a “poke” of candy, nuts, and fruit to take home as a gift from the church. Mountain and hill people have their own accent. They pronounce the “i” in words like night, light, bright, ice, etc. with a long sounding “i”. I didn’t know I even had that accent until I moved to the eastern part of N.C. when I got married at age 19. Everyone thought it was funny the way I talked. Even now after 52 years of marriage and living in the east all this time, my accent has not changed even though I tried.
Author
I like that your accent didn’t change, Connie. Sometimes it’s good to hang onto those unique gifts of childhood and family. In Kentucky if you go to the south of the state or maybe southeast, you hear the night and light with that different “i” sound. Funny how it’s different not so far away.
Our little country church always gave everyone a sack of candy and fruits at the Christmas program each year. Actually we still do. It’s such a long tradition we don’t want to stop it. At one time it was just for the children, but now with our small congregation and few children attending, we give them to everyone. But we never called them pokes. Only brown paper sacks.
I grew up in the Bronx, New York, so no mountain sayings did I hear! And I never had that Bronx accent. (My schoolmates always said I didn’t talk like them.) My mother was always one for speaking well, despite the fact that she left school after eighth grade to help support her family. (She was kind of in the middle of eight children.) She read the newspaper cover to cover, and magazines as well. My mother would never allow me to refer to a female as “she”. Mom always said, “she is the cat’s mother” always use the proper name. I think I must have said that to my son too, because when he was a preteen we visited a coworker of mine who bred Himalayan cats and my son said to me, she IS the cat’s mother!!!!
Author
Interesting, Marjorie. You must have had talk at home without that Bronx accent to escape having one. Sounds as if your mother aimed to see that you spoke well as she did. I certainly didn’t excape a county accent. That’s for sure.
I would have never thought about not allowing someone to call a girl or woman she. My stories would get overloaded with proper names if I couldn’t substitute a she or a he instead of the name every time. That’s a cute story about your son and seeing the she that was a cat’s mother. 🙂
Whenever I hear the word poke I think of the expression “a pig in a poke”. I’ve heard and used some of those expressions all my life, although I grew up and still live in the city. Someone often said another didn’t “have a lick of sense”. We didn’t say “pert nigh” but “pert near”. I’d never heard “the edge of dark” until I read your books, but I, too, love that one. I think everyone who grew up somewhere in America in the fifties loved those “wish books”. I looked forward to their arrival and spent many hours pouring over them!
Author
It was an exciting day when the Christmas book, aka wish book, showed up in the mailbox, Karen. Sears catalogue were great for many things. One, besides wishing, was using the models and clothes for paperdolls.
I’m beginning to think I was the only one to say nigh instead of near, but that’s still how I hear it. Maybe Mama just said it that way.
As I told Lee, I heard that pig in a poke too, but never really asked what a poke was or how a pig would get in one. I did know what it meant as in not buying something until you saw it.
I have heard and perhaps sometimes said that about someone not having a “lick of sense.” Hopefully not where anybody could hear me.
Isn’t it great how language can connect us no matter where we live.
I’ve heard a lot of those expressions because my ancestors came from Kentucky. I had to question sass patch, because I hadn’t heard that one. Do you know that got started?
Author
I had never heard the sass for vegetables before I began researching for my mountain stories, Marlene. I wondered, like you, where that came from. Maybe I’ll stumble across the reason when I start researching again.
I don’t know if it is mountain lingo but my step- mom used to say ” don’t be ugly” and she was never talking about looks.
Also my friend used to say. I wouldn’t tip that instead of saying touch.
Back to yours , we heard and said, pert near instead of nigh.
I love the Mountain lingo in your books and I’m looking forward to the next one!
Author
I’ve said that to my kids a few times and maybe to my husband too., Lisa. LOL. Sometimes I tell myself that too if I’m thinking something not nice about someone or something. As for that pert nigh, maybe I just didn’t hear or remember it right. But pert nigh is what I hear in my memory. Pert near makes more sense, I suppose, although you can come nigh something.
I am not sure these sayings were country but my mom used to say, “time to rid the table”, after we had dinner and she called a vegetable platter, a relish dish. Green bell peppers were mangoes.
Author
That’s one I never heard before, Bonnie. We always “cleared” the table, but I like the “rid” the table. It sounds like it could be a mountain or country saying.
I grew up i in Pennsylvania and we always said “redd off the table, redd up the room, etc.” Bonnie’s mom must have pronounced “redd” a little differently.
Author
I guess “redd” could be ready up the table, Lee. Seems as though thinking of it as redd rings some memory bells for me.
I’ve heard and used some of those that you mentioned, including poke. Can’t think of any others off-hand but “poke” brings to mind a phrase I’ve always heard and used. If we accept something , knowing little or nothing about it, we say “it’s like buying a pig in a poke.” I’m looking forward to your next mountain story.
Author
I heard that about getting or buying a pig in a poke when I was a kid, Lee, but I guess I just shrugged it off since I had no idea what a poke was or how you might get a pig into it. LOL. I wonder now why I didn’t ask, but it could be there were many things people said that I didn’t understand and just shrugged off.