Words in Appalachia that start with A

so i've been trying to think of a way that we could talk about appalachian language more you know i've done a few videos about funny sayings and deep sayings and different words but then i kept thinking about it on my blog while i'm picking the acorn i have a monthly test appalachian vocabulary test so that's a way to talk about it and of course i share other posts but then i got the idea that maybe i should just get the dictionary of course it has to be dictionary with appalachian words in it and go through it and talk about each word as we come to it so that's what i'm going to do today i've got the dictionary of smoky mountain english it was uh created by michael montgomery and joseph hall actually michael montgomery done most of the work but joseph hall was such a part of it his research was such a part of it he's listed too and it was published by the university of tennessee in uh 2004 it's a really hard book to find and if you find it it's very very expensive i've had mine for since i started the blind pig in the acorn so since i guess 2008 miss cindy bought it for me and even then she she paid a pretty penny for it miss cindy's my mother-in-law that's uh for those of you who don't know so it was a gift from her they are publishing a new dictionary of smokey mountain english it's expected to be out sometime next spring so i'm anxiously awaiting that and i hope that it'll at least when it first publishes that it won't be as expensive some of these you can find online go for a thousand dollars now which is just kind of hard for most people to do you know of course it is a thousand dollar book a thousand dollar dictionary but it is priceless in one way because the dictionary the way it's laid out of course it's got all words but it has so many references and so many little tidbits about each word that you'll find it also has a a great grammar part of it in the front so it goes over a lot of the grammar that's used in in the smoky mountains but smoky mountains is in appalachia so a lot of the things that's talked about in it go throughout the the whole appalachian range or is commonly found instead of just in those smoky mountains that it's the title of the dictionary anyway so today i'll go and skip over to the there's also some great photos in the beginning of the book that are actually photos of some of the people that joseph hall interviewed so some of the research that it that ended up in the dictionary you can also see some of the people in the front of it i'm going to skip over to the a's we'll just start at the very beginning so the the very first word in the dictionary is funny is a so it's an indefinite article so in place of an a and we use it in place of an and before a vowel sound so here's some i won't go through all of them but here's just some examples we'll see if any of them are still familiar today so 1789 big pigeon minutes that was the book that they quoted from whereas the times looking very difficult in respect of the indians being so troublesome and in the case the church should be dissolved under such a unhappy circumstance the church does hereby empower abram mckay as clark of said church to give any order remember as dissolved a letter of dismention in behalf of said church wow that was a really crazy one for me to pick the very first one of the dictionary let's see if we can here's another one uh grandfather this is 1937 from the hall collection so this is something he recorded someone saying grandfather came here on a ox wagon anyway so that's the first one let's um go to the next one the next one a is like it goes all through these it has like a we're going to skip over a it's so complicated okay let's go back a backup so that's a preposition that means behind same as back of but we say a backup so i might say the chicken coop is the back of the house that's one way so here's an example from the hall collection 1939 deep creek north carolina they was out of hearing of going just out just the back of round top just out of here and going out just a back of round top so a back a back of a bed you might think that's pretty obvious if you're a bed you're in the bed so here's one 1936 swain county north carolina that was it was recorded as being used there here's a sentence from paris 1955 roaming the mountains here i was a bed and could hardly move but he said he would carry me so if you were a bed you were in the bed i've never heard anyone say that one so that one's definitely falling out of fashion abide that's a great one that's just a good word all together if you abide it's such a strong word if you abide in something but so to endure to bear with patience to tolerate to endure and so 1974 fink bits of mountain speech tolerate endure and then the example is i can't abide them kind abide that's a great word okay uh a body it just says see body so we'll have to wait on that one a boon i've never heard that one a boon is a preposition it means above so i've never heard that one a boon please let me know any of these words whether you've heard them or if you know about them or anything you want to say about them um let's go a cause means because i don't i don't know if i've ever heard anyone say a calls maybe account no account that's really premier really common uh account is worth value is the way we use it i have a daughter kate katie or chitter on the blog if you know her from that way and she says that a lot she uses account like that it's not no account or it's not any account she uses account like that a lot but that's just account means value to us it's like a way of saying value acid would that's one you don't hear much unless you're around logging or paper mails or something like that bark rich and tannic acid that is harvested from chestnut oak and other trees and sold for use in finishing leather goods so it could be in the leather tanning process also i guess but also you'll hear that in like i guess paper mills a cross this is a good one we put a t on it so it crossed it's funny that t shows up like in once across there's a bunch of them of course i can't think of all of them now but that's one that's even if i hear someone talking because i'm always listening for stuff even if it's someone that doesn't really have an appalachian accent at all or even a southern accent sometimes i'll hear that t at the end of their words and i'll be surprised but also know that someone influenced them to add that tea i don't think that i add teas to mine another common one is we add d's to it sometimes like gowned instead of just saying gown put your gown on and put your gown to own put a d on it it's crazy okay across the waters that's just a preparation prepositional phrase over the ocean used by older people in the 1930s and identifying their ancestors origin you might i still hear people say kind of like across the pond or over the pond or something but across the waters that's a neat one act the fool if you act a fool it means that you're acting and playing up playing like a clown or being foolish or whatever the one sentence from that one 1937 hall collection cosby tennessee i was just acting the fool that was leela ramsey had said that adam and eve is a noun as a perennial orchid formerly used in conjuring to make a love potion wow i've never i don't know what an adam and eve is i'd like to know though the quote from that one is 1901 loons and berry southern wildflowers another curious point is that when the plant is uprooted they are found to be as in a chain several old corms attached in succession to the one of the present season it was perhaps a young plant which had borne but two which suggests to dome the donor its popular name adam and eve hand in hand i don't know what that plan is but i'd like to know there's another kind of a saying or whatever adam's fool or adam's house cat adam's off ox that's a noun and it's a person who cannot name or recognize so here's an example uh 1931 comes i didn't know him from adam's off ox now i hear my whole life i've heard people say i don't know him from all adam just that part so maybe over the years the adams house cat adams off ox and fool got just left by the wayside i have heard people say i don't know him from adam's house cat that one but anyway if you hear someone say i don't know him from adam or i don't know her from adam it just means i don't know who they are i never knew them adam's needle that's a yuca plant those grow wild even in my area they do miss cindy has some in her yard um adder's tongue that's a flowering wild plant same as dog tooth violet fawn lily lamb's tongue and trout lily addle if you add ol someone that's today's hence adult so if you get com if you're adult you're like confused or kind of weak or just don't know what's going on so here's a good one from there 1939 the hall collection mount sterling north carolina i got back over there and found the shots and went off and killed six men found two laying down the road the other boys were crawling around their adult it took us something like two or three hours to get them all gathered up or practically all evening matt caldwell is who was being interviewed at that time so i wonder what happened it must have been some kind of explosion addle off if you add a loft it means you stagger or limp away as in a dazed manner i don't think i've heard that one either i've heard this one at all padded it just means the same thing as addled like the kind of off in the head or something like that i feared i've heard people say a fear and i'm a feared of that or a feared of this it just means afraid they're afraid affected is used sometimes for infected if you're affected i don't think i've ever heard anyone use that but it just means infected so they must have said something well let's see what they said his hand got affected so instead of saying like his hand got infected a 4 means before so that's another one where they're using the a let's see now the way the thing happened was this and i reckon you never heard such like a four so that was an 1849 lanham allegheny mountains that was pretty interesting aftern they put up an r and an en i mean an en after the r i've never heard anyone say that one after him he never gave me his check before just what was left over after and he had been out with the boys and this time there weren't no money left over and that was from 1989 smith flying bullets afterwards different variant forms uh adders adder words i've heard people say that they kind of use the t instead of for the after par adder adder wall that kind of thing a geep that's one that's like a call to pig same as geep or goop i've never had pigs so i never heard that seems like my papaw would just say pig pig pig when he wanted the pigs but he did have a unique and other hunters here too way of calling their dogs um i can't do it it's like yeehaw hiya or something like that anyway there's all sorts of uh different ways of how people examples of how people called their animals to come eat is what they were doing calling them or calling them maybe for the hunting dogs to go hunt but um and then there's even it's interesting sometimes at fairness and festivals and that kind of thing there will be a hog calling contest or those kind of calling contests so that they and then they whoever does the best hog call or sheep call or whatever it is they win a prize so that's interesting aggravatedness that's a good one we just put an est we put an est on a lot of our words so the aggravatedness so i could say sometimes he was the aggravatiness boy i ever seen he was always pulling my hair and pushing my books out of the seat and the boy i rode the bus with was the most aggravatedness boy i ever seen in my life so that's a way to use abrabas agonies that's a good one it says it's sickness or ailment mary hadn't been doing her work since she's been suffering with the agonies agonies maybe that's like agony agony agonies i guess that was garber mountaineeze 1976 a hold you'll hear a lot of people still say that one take a hold of that right there we put an a before hold sometimes you hear the t on the end of the hold to holt so let's see 1932 dargan call home i can't get a hold of her 1940 honk han hank's done i took a hold of his neck and watched his foot uh 1962 duckman tall woman our troops got to keep a hold of it till the rebs surrender ma'am anyway those are some examples of a halt if you aim to do something that means you plan to do something uh your purpose you have purpose your intended so i aim to do that so i aim to talk more about appalachian language on this channel i don't know if this video was a good example of that or not but you can tell me that in the comments anyway next time if it is we'll start back with the a's and we'll continue on from where we left off today but i hope you enjoyed this hope you'll leave a comment about the words and the ones like me you've never even heard of or the ones you're really familiar with mostly i just hope you'll drop back by often as i celebrate appalachia and that includes a large part of it is celebrating the wonderful appalachian language

Channel: Celebrating Appalachia

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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, words that start with A

Id: MkzZK0pGwyI

Length: 14min 14sec (854 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 21 2021