Words from Appalachian Language

hello everybody today we're going to talk about appalachian language i've got someone with me today my daughter corey hey y'all you may know corey from the blog as chatter you may also know her because she's one half of the presley girl so there's a lot of various ways that you may have seen her face before but as soon as i started this channel i started getting emails and comments from people who said hey are you ever going to go live and i thought oh my gosh i don't think i could go live that's just crazy talk you know because i watch a lot of other youtubers and i'm always interested when they go live but i just couldn't imagine what in the world would i talk about but then the more i thought about it i thought well i could talk about appalachian language and people could um could comment the words they were interested in or words they were familiar with or they weren't familiar with and that kind of thing so it starts a conversation so if you're not familiar with going live on youtube so it just means that you go on live and people join your live video and then they can comment in real time so as they're commenting maybe if we were talking about appalachian language and they said hey have you ever heard this word then i can me and corey or whoever's with me can answer them back and we can have a virtual conversation basically so if that's something you guys are interested in we can talk more about that in another video or you can leave a comment on this video if you want to if that's something that you'd be interested in seeing a live video and taking part in it and real time communication there about appalachian language but today corey and i we have some of my favorite books with me today this one is southern mountain speech by kratis d williams it's it's i think you can pretty easily find it it's an old book but it's really fascinating it's really all about language and then in the very back he has like a dictionary with different words which is really cool there's this one smoky mountain voices a lexicon of southern appalachian speech by farewell and nichols and it's really neat it's just a dictionary it's just got words it doesn't really have any commentary or anything like that but each word has has a lot of text within examples and that kind of thing this one mountain range a dictionary of expressions from appalachia to the ozarks so it's really interesting it's by robert hendrickson i like it a lot too and again it's just a dictionary but it's a good one if you can find it my favorite one the big one and i'm sure if you've watched my videos or read my blog post or seen anything i've talked about anywhere on online you've seen me talk about the dictionary smokey mountain english this one is out of print currently i've had this one since way back when i first started the blind pig in the acorn like in 2008 my mother-in-law bought it for me and even then she bought she paid a pretty penny for it it was expensive but i use it constantly so it's been well worth her money that she spent on me but good news is they're about to come out with a new one sometime in the spring there'll be a new addition so this one if you do find it because it's out of print it's really really expensive i've seen them for over a thousand dollars so really pricey really pricey but they're really good there's so much documentation in them and so much commentary about the appalachian language it focuses on the smoky mountain region this one does but still that's that kind of uh if it's common in western north carolina and east tennessee it's kind of common in tennessee and kentucky and west virginia and on up to so that's a really good one to have so in the spirit of going live even though we're not live we're just going to randomly pick words from various books here we'll probably start with the dictionary of smoky mountain english and then we'll talk about them and then i hope that you'll leave a comment and tell us that if you're familiar with the word if it's used in your area maybe if it was used when you were a child or hey maybe it's still used today those are the ones i love that are still in use today so corey and i are just randomly gonna gonna pick some you want to start yeah this is exciting guys okay this is a big book i'll try to just find one and pick it oh okay this is kind of cute this word is bus b-u-s-s it's a verb and it means to kiss so let's see what else it says woe to the daring swain who attempts a bus unawares he is not prepared to be biffed one on the snoot that's really good so that one was from 1962 mountain speech uh williams mountain speech uh so a bus is one that i've heard i don't hear often but it's like if you bust a baby so you're not you're kissing it and cuddling with it and scrooging it up but biff is that one that you and katie say so he has a twin sister named katie yeah so if we say katie that's who we're talking about our chitter on the blind pigging yeah so or the other half of the press league right interesting enough bift actually is a word that kitty and i use i read a book series one time super just real goofy silly but it was by an english author and they used the word bift a lot and what they meant mostly the bit biff was referred to they had a cat and the cat would biff something so if you imagine you know you're playing with maybe a baller yarn and the cat dips it they're just hitting it swiping it but um you could use that you know for other stuff if you were to biff someone probably in your nose you're gonna smack them right so that reminds me corey said england reminds me of another one let's see if we can find it is blair so if you blare your eyes [Music] at someone let's see [Music] maybe one more yeah well it's got to be you close well i would swear that it's in here it's not no it's really not so that's interesting it's not in this one but that's one that i've wrote about on the blind pig and the acorn before let's see if it's in any of these let me try credit scores so if you blare your eyes at someone your eyes get really big like and it's kind of here like if i blared my eyes at corey what would you think i was meaning you were mad at me i you better straighten up or i better straighten it out right so one time i wrote about it on the uh blind pig in the acorn and someone that reads my blog from england he said they still use the word in certain areas there but it means to cry so it would mean like she blared her eyes out over her puppy that got killed or something like that that was really sad with him right there anyway blaire means uh and that over there means to cry honestly i didn't find it in that one in these surely it'll be in one of them no not in that one either it's not in this one anyway so that would be one that we will really be interested in you telling us if you're familiar with blair like in reference to your eyes i didn't fry it in that one either oh you already looked okay well okay we're going to the next one pick us another one i like this one um what about frog gig frog gig so that's definitely something i always grew up hearing about i've never been frog gigging myself but froggit frog gig it's a verb it means to hunt frogs with a gig which is usually like a stick i think so 1972 um i can never remember going in the smoke house and not finding meat hams wild meat of the forest snapping turtle hard shelled frog legs possum meat rolled in flour black pepper and salt we'd go frog kicking so that was uh 1972 the hall collection emirates cove tennessee so that's neat and frog giggin i think is pretty fairly common all through the south but right above it is an interesting one it's frog eye gravy so it says same as red eye gravy for 1944 more tennessee expressions um red gravy past the frog eye so they're just calling that's just in a place where they called red eye gravy frog eye gravy but that's pretty neat i guess it still looks like an eye that's the point of red eye gravy okay let's go to where are we i feel like dana white when i need to turn the way the next word okay let's see are you looking for one no i'm letting you know i was starting the book for you you can keep turning and turn it to wherever you are this is exciting i like this um let's see let's see let's see what about this page i'm trying to pick one that i feel like is not as common what about like a scalded dog means very it's an adverb it means very hastily let's see that cat runs like a scalded dog and that is from 1939 hall white oak north carolina the hall collection home collection that's an i've heard that one before he took out of here like a scalded dog just talking about run fasting or something going hastily or fast away from you so i've heard that one before i don't know if corey has i don't know if i ever not something interesting though is under it it says like a yellow dog says with contempt this in substance was the burden of the jilted one's original lament by the time it was brooded about for a week it was being indignantly told that this here uppity fur and woman i can't say that much just pointed out disappointedly ordered ducklink out to the house like a yeller dog and said she wouldn't let him doctor a hot sick house or a cow brute of her okay uh she was mad she was mad i liked that though because we play a fiddle tune called old yellow dog yeah old yellow dog come trotting through the meat i'm talking through the meat and house right that's a good one all right i don't know turn you do it let's go back here to the back and see what we got going on um okay what about this one what about unions okay that's a good one so i think i've wrote about that one and there's it's even uh documented in brass town so he had on new union halls and they suited him 1968 brasstown um let's see so uh anyway union halls are just overall some people call them union halls when i i think i'm more familiar with union halls being uh kind of like long underwire that's what i thought union hall it does stay long underwater does it the second one yeah long underwear okay yeah corey and katie when they were little i always remember some of the cute outfits i liked and they had a pair of um unionolls that were red oshkosh that buttoned you know all the way up and had the little flap in the back i always thought they were so cute in them hey i tell you what folks long underwear is a good thing to have it keeps you warm this is a neat one a mare's tail that's a thin streak of white clouds in the sky so 1931 calms see judging from them mayor's tales it looks like warm weather so that was a sign of warm weather i guess 1966 long trailing clouds high in the sky and that was spruce pine north carolina where that was documented that's a neat one oh yeah all right turn us another let's go back towards the beginning okay um [Music] i wish there ain't even no words on that one makes me wonder oh we're back in maybe no we're not let's see what is that long so that's the entry for b it goes on like b e it goes on like two pages basically all the different usages what about oh yeah i know what baton is a heavy piece of oh no it's a heavy piece of wood nailed over a crack between boards no i was thinking of batting i was thinking of batting like you would put a quilt [Music] here's a neat one a lot of times words in appalachia they're just the same words but we put a different emphasis or we add letters or whatever so barefoot but we say barefooted i always say barefooted i don't think i ever say i say i'm barefooted i can't go out there or it's too early to go barefooted or granny would say don't go barefooted you're going to catch a cold she told me that all the time so barefooted is a good one uh here's a right under it's a neat one bark so of course you know dogs bark but you also bark like if you hit your uh you ever hit your shin on something it hurts well that's you barked your chin it's like hurt like a scrape or a hit on your shin or your elbow or something that's a good one here's a good one uh backward i was so backward when i was growing up and i still am sometimes even though here i am talking to people on youtube but uh so backward means shy or bashful so if you're backward i was backward i would hide behind if somebody tried to talk to me when i was real little i'd hide behind pat's legs or behind granny's dress tail i wonder though how common that is drop a comment below and let us know because backward is something i think i've heard all my life and you know if you say that person was backward you kind of know they were shy maybe they were a little bit like oh what's going on yeah here's a neat one a straddle so it just means straddling something it says having legs stretched across the top of sitting or standing with one leg on each side of an object but we put that a a strike get a straddle of that and it'll be easier to reach yeah and even reach is a good one we won't go look it up but so instead of hand sometimes in appalachia you hear people say corey reach me that book yeah yeah reach me that app danny says that yeah granny says reach yeah um here's one a holt so if you take a hold of something but see we changed we put the t on it we like t's like a crossed and wants and all those but a holt it just means take a hold of something uh here's a one cory can identify with the this is just another pronunciation that's different alcohol you've heard granny and pat both say that they said alke hall alkyh alkey hall they still granny still says that has passed away but alke hall you'll hear older people say that sometimes younger people he was drinking that alcohol or go get me that rub and alcohol i've got a cut you know they want to so that's a neat one that's the beginning and then in a minute we'll let's go back and look back and then we'll look in one of the other books and see what is tooth jumper so a tooth jumper is why we should all be very happy we have modern dentists so in the old days before there was dentist and you had a toothache if you've ever had a bad tooth like i have you'll do anything you get so desperate you want it out no matter what so in those days there was people who were known for being good tooth jumpers so basically as horrible as it sounds they took a chisel or something and they if you hit the tooth just right it would jump out it would come out in the person's mouth so it was a method of pulling it but somehow that was easier than actually just pulling it so it says in the dictionary smokey mountain english two's jumper tooth puller a noun an untrained dentist who uses a hammer and a nail to extract or cause a tooth to jump out and then 1961 semen arms of mountain imagine going to a mountain tooth jumper who was armed with hammer and nail and kept a pair of home forged pliers handy that would be bad but in those days if they're and and sometimes it was isolation too you didn't have you know the money or the wherewithal to get to a dentist pap told us told me a story about when he was he was probably about 12 years old and he had a toothache a really bad toothache and there just what no dentist or no way to get him to a dentist or it was just harder in those days than it is today and he lived here in this hauler where we live and uh he might have been older than 12 but anyway it was when he still lived here well his grandmother and grandfather they lived across the gap in uh across coleman gap in pylon so he told me one more and he woke up and that tooth was hurting him and he just slipped out of the house and i don't i never thought to ask him how did your mom and daddy know where you went but anyway he went across the mountain to see his grandpa grandma so his grandpa said well the only way to do it is to pull it is you're going to have to pull it it should get it to quit hurting that's what's wrong with it well he said in those days you know today we have i have a mirror literally in every room in my house maybe not in the kitchen where we're at but in the foyer in the living room in all the bedrooms and in the bathrooms i we have mirrors everywhere but in those day that they just didn't have mirrors like that but there was one outside he said it was propped up of course they didn't have running water propped up at a place where they would wash their hands and wash their face and stuff he said it's just a sliver it was broke but it was there so he got his grandpa got him the pliers and he got in front of that mirror and got a hold of it and started pulling as hard as he could trying to pull the tooth and i think the grandpa maybe tried first and he just couldn't do it probably because he knew he's hurting him but then pat tried himself and he pulled till he passed out he literally passed out and fell backwards and uh he said after that his grandpa grandma said no matter what it takes we're taking that boy to a dentist or to somebody that can pull that too so they did they got him to a dentist another funny dentist story skip ahead to pap was the oldest and uncle henry was the youngest when i was probably i was probably five or six i wasn't in in actual school maybe i was in the head start or something and they had a program where they would take you to get your teeth fixed and so they were going to take me and i remember i was i remember the dentist was dr dickey and he was very nice and all that he was by sweet tooth in murphy but anyway mama marie pap's mother and henry's mother she told me was telling me to be good and to let them fix my teeth and not to be like uncle henry because she said one time we took him to the dentist and we got out one side of the car waiting for him to get out of the other side of the car and he locked all the doors and he wouldn't get out so that was yeah that's just funny okay let's get back to the to the uh i'm going down squirrel trail here i'll see here let's go all the way back and then we'll get another one let's see i don't know if there's any z's there i think there is maybe one let's see one or two no oh yeah there is a zigger boo that's the same as a g walk g hall whimmy diddle so that's a little thing you play with a zigzag fence is a worm fence i don't know that zony's alive that's a mile boat zone is alive seems like i've heard somebody say that wow yeah that's cool yeah a lot of times the ones that uh is i've seen this when younes that's a common when you hear people a lot of times people might make fun of us for saying that one younes that's like how we are you all i say young's a lot i say that all the time yeah people um and then your yarn put r in the urine you know or i guess you're putting an n on the ends what you're doing but that's another one that sometimes people make fun of us for those men yawn that's a good one so um if it's over yawn or over yan way you'll hear people say over yanway look over the anway or yonder or yander those are all different ones um let's see this is an interesting one i've wrote about it before and i've never heard anybody say it before though but yieldy so it's talking about land if a piece of land is yieldy that means it produces a good garden or produces a good crop of whatever you're growing there's a yam way it's kind of for me or similar to what we were talking about let's see there was one we skipped it but you'd hear people you've heard people say oh she was just an old witter woman and they say instead of widow it's witter with it yeah a hoop and a holler so if you're just uh greening paps is just a hoop and a holler from here means it's real close that's a good one all right corey oh here's this is a good one up scuttle you know what up scuttle is yeah it means like a cool yeah so you and kate court katie are often in up scuttles about stuff not often i'm just kidding when they were little there was a lot of up scuttling or coraline granny just calls it coraline tell him to quit coraline uh should we look in another yeah which one okay so this is the mountain range a dictionary of expressions from appalachia to the ozarks it's this one this is by robert hendrickson so i'm just going to flip to a page in here this says cow cumber a pronunciation of cucumber dating back to early english and still common among among the hill folk i don't think i've ever heard a cow cumber um i have heard this one right under it creek and hauler folks another synonym for people who live in the mountains creek and holler folks i like that one that's cool dwindling shrinking wasting away due to poor health i guess she'll keep on drinking until she dies that's kind of sad yeah sorry i've never heard that one um what about durgen and an uncouth unpolished clumsy person most of the people around here have some manners but he's a real durgen the origin of the term is unknown huh that's an interesting one um let's see oh let's see i thought i've seen one i wanted what is acorn cracker an insulting derogatory name for a mountaineer suggesting one is so poor and uncouth he eats acorns that's terrible that's kind of bad let's see if i can get one that's not so bad here yeah um this is a neat one uh read that one lashes so lass is molasses and they have been some other fellers that made lasses that they thought was good too so instead of saying molasses it's just glasses glasses in this area instead of like molasses or lassis what people just say is syrup it's just syrup some people might say sorghum sir but most people papa always just say i bought some syrup today you know if he he had a man he would get a case of honey and a case of syrup i mean not not the same man two different men but anyway he'd say i bought some serp okay this one's pretty crazy i have to read this one jumpy as a pregnant fox in a forest fire oh god says very nervous anxious distraught yeah you'd be distraught that'd be terrible um jimmy john said said of someone with a prominent projecting lower jaw either um hell's banjo an old oath from the southern appalachians hell's banjo if i ain't lost my folding knife that's a good cause what about henwood legend has it that the mountain tree henwood also called chidumwood was the wood used to build noah's ark that's interesting hissy fit this is something i think a lot of people perhaps know something i've always definitely said a hysterical fit thrown by a very disturbed and angry person hissy here may derive from hysterical also heard as throw a hissy and pitch a hissy yeah and also a connection fit or just she's having a connection tell her to turn to calm down so lots of different wants to describe having fits for sure that's a good one we don't we can't do that this year because we didn't plan any potatoes but gravel to dig up potatoes from a row with one hand one's hands leaving the plants intact i think it's called gravel too even if you just if you use a potato digger still you're grabbling you're getting those early potatoes out um this is one fixing intending it means you're intending to do something i'm fixing to go there next week this is something that we use in our household i swear it seems like every day katie especially she'll say well i'm fixing to do this i'm fixing to go to town do you need anything that's another in my previous accent video that i talked about where we leave almost all those ing words we leave the g off oh yeah yeah um some of these these are so good guys you should get at least one of these books they're pretty entertaining this is see this one i can't even believe is in here it's just dear me a synonym for venison in the ozarks and elsewhere i didn't even know what venison was even though i'd eat deer meat so deer meat's for sure much more common in appalachia than someone saying venison um despised to hate to detest i despise to leave these great smokies i use that a lot like i despise to go to work no yeah contrarius an old english word meaning contrary in the southern appalachian still used today as it was in the day of chaucer yeah and contrary to the pose i don't know about that one because i think if you just corey you're being contrary quit doing that it's like if you're stubborn or unwilling to yield to something or just having a bad day being in a bad mood you're contrary cracklings pork or other meat of which the fat's been fried yeah chickens today feathers tomorrow a saying among hill folk roughly equivalent to here today going tomorrow or life is short that's about that one chickens today feathers tomorrow that's pretty good city fired a person who has left the mountains to live in the cities yeah okay now let's look at southern mountain speech by krattus d williams i really like this book i think in the back he's got saiyans and he's got uh let's see he's got let's just look at some of these it says a word list from the mountains of kentucky and north carolina so a booger a demon with which to frighten children not to be confused with the devil or satan i think kind of interchangeable uh booger and boogie man yeah saying like the devil's going to get you or i guess a booger could be just some big burly somebody coming after you um let's see dido do you know what a dido is you cut a dido you have a fit a dido can also be you turn do a donut in your car yeah that's cool yeah you see yeah so mully grubs that's a good one if you get the molly grubs means you're down and out you're depressed he's got the molly grubs i wish someone would cheer him up soccer a fruit cobbler that sounds funny yeah i've heard of sonker before torch i say that one instead of toward i say i can't even say toward towards towards you know towards hayesville up there that's where he lives let's see and then here's the glossary of mountain speech a side of means a lot of a raisin means the process of growing up if you get the all-overs you're nervous or you get uh the chills or like you ever feel like what is one of those sayings a rabbit runs across your you see grave cory um a bait a bait of food like he ate a big bait of fish and then he was sick for two or three days so bait is like a big uh a large amount of food of any kind of food i eat a bait of black eyed peas and hog jaws on new year's day that's one bulk the space between furrows in a cultivated field that's cool but it also can mean refuse to go like if you bark at something yeah blue john is skim milk i say bitties as chickens or chicks little ones um bobo a mistake yeah let's see there's your bus again to kiss uh call to name or remember that's i don't know about that one let's see it makes me think of one oh i know one that makes me think of is some people say i used to work with a sweet lady and she'd say like if i said did the supervisor tell you to do or she was going to town or whatever and she'd say no she never named it to me so that's like to the same kind of thing to call on if you call on somebody you're going courtin courtney's still common here we still say courtney um cat heads biscuits clum people you'll hear some people someone in this house my husband he says climb he climbed a tree instead of climb uh a cluttermate is just a junk junked up place if you cry calf rope it means you give up somebody's like holding you down you gotta cry calf rope it means you give up there's the calcu calcumber again and this one a haint is a ghost you'll hear that one often haul off to take strong action he hauled off and knocked him down yeah your guzzle you know what your google is yeah yeah hippins for diapers you don't hear that one no more though uh should we look in this one yeah you can look in there i'll be looking and i'll finish this one out let's see a pump knot that was funny one time i wrote about that and people weren't familiar with it so a pump knot i had a pump knot right here i think it's gone i raised up in the basement went paying attention and hit something hit my head on something but a pump knot is just when you hit your head some way and you get a knot that raises up that's a pump knot uh puret if you're pure to purity you hear granny say that one should say about her little grandbaby she'll say look at her she's superior and looking around paying attention it just means she's active and in good health let's see a ruckus that one's pretty common that's just a altercation i write smart means a good amount old scratch you know who old scratch is the devil yeah the devil let's see a sinking spell seems like i used to hear an old lady say that she had a sinking spell that's like a faint and spell or dizziness another one for that same kind of feeling is wheat trembles if you get the we get the wheat trembles in this house it means usually you need to eat a bite of something and drink something and then you'll feel better your blood sugars really just took a dive but the wheat trembles i've got two in here okay go right ahead so plum but not like what you eat p-o-u-m-v means complete or full them hogs are plum pets yeah plum curd of course ain't can't follow a cold truck he just runs by side yeah i like plum too be like i'm plumb wore out i'm yeah and this is cory's reading out of the smoky mountain voices the lexicon of southern appalachian speech and that's by farewell and nickels another one is hella baloo that's a good one also also is hula blue but it says um well you need to make such a hella balloon about it like don't make such a big deal here's a good one wasper so that just means wasp i was literally an adult before i knew wasper was not a word i was actually working with one of my cousins in a oh i don't know two or three counties from here in haywood county anyway and i said something about a wasp and she said you know that's not a word don't you and i said yes it is and said no it's not yes it is no it's not and finally i didn't believe her until i looked in the dictionary because i'd heard wasper my whole life that's just what we called them we're waspers but she's the one had to tell me that no but that's another example of adding the word so we're adding the r to the wasper this one's interesting it says gorm if a house isn't disordered it's said to be all going or gummed up i use gumdrop a lot yeah gobs a bumper mass especially a mouthful every morning i cough up just garbs of snow oh gosh that's bad here's one just these are saiyans now similes and metaphors if i'd been a copperhead i could have bit him i've not heard the copperhead part but you know if it been a snake it would have bit me that's really common hair black is a crow's wing hair like love vines on a fence hair thick as sheep's wool when you get your hand in a bear's mouth oh that's i've skipped down to another one i was like i gotta finish that one now though when you get your hand in a bear's mouth you better work easy until you get it out yeah i guess so happy is a and a hollow log that i'd say as long as the hunter is not trying to find him solid is the heels that's a good one rough as a gritter or rough as a cob you hear rough as a cob a lot of times thin is a whipper wheel thirsty is a dry goose the tune the old cow died on a devilish or badly played tune you'll have to remember that if you play a bad lick you could say well that's the tune the old cow died on uh trying to draw blood from a turnip you've probably all heard that one warm as dish water i've heard weak as dish water too talking about like coffee that's weak as dishwater or you're weak as dishwater sometimes it's a person feeling like that i've got one like pulling teeth oh man proctor ours will have a good big fire and by george it was like pulling teeth to come away from it so saying you know oh i had to go to town and it was like pulling teeth there were so many people you know yeah that's a good mine's a pretty common one it's like pulling teeth because pulling teeth are hard whether you're doing it with a nail and a hammer or by a dentist hopefully you're at the beginning yeah hopefully you're understanding this yeah so i hope you've enjoyed this me and corey rambling about all these words and phrases from appalachia if you did please share it with your friends and neighbors please subscribe to our channel and mostly we just hope you'll drop back by often as we celebrate appalachia and remember be sure to let us know if you think a live video is something that you would enjoy

Channel: Celebrating Appalachia

Views: 127,469

Keywords: Appalachian mountains, Appalachia, Appalachian language, Appalachian accent, unusual words used in the mountains, unusual words from Appalachia, funny southern sayings, southern accent, the way people talk in the south, dictionary of smoky mountain english, how to do an Appalachian accent, Appalachian Mountain Talk, Appalachian phrases, Appalachian Dictionary, Southern Accent, Mountain Accent, Appalachian vocabulary test, Southern Appalachian Accent

Id: 9xnCnsUYkts

Length: 35min 16sec (2116 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 13 2020