Just How We Talk

According to Moneypenny.com who did a survey of America’s favorite accents, Midwesterners came in fourth. New Yorkers came in third and Brits came in second. Drum roll please: and the winning accent? Southerners. We talk slow and stretch out our words and phrases. I can be carrying on a simple conversation and some yankee will stop me and ask me to repeat something.

“What did you just say?”

I said: “The boy got all bowed up when I asked him to cut the lights out.” They asked a stupid question: “How do you cut the lights out?” I asked: “Have you lost your marbles? Just cut them off.”  It took me 5 minutes to explain the art of “bowing up.” There is a Southern code: if you bow up, you better be able to cash a check with your fists that your mouth just wrote. We say “Cut the lights out.” Others might say to turn them off. Grandma’s have been asking about lost marbles since the Depression. Apparently losing your marbles is the same as saying something crazy like “That tofu was really tasty. Can I spread some on my sweet cornbread?”

Southerners don’t think twice when talking. Like many of you, I say “crazier than a sprayed roach.” “Mash the button in the elevator.” “Her elevator doesn’t quite reach the top floor.” “I picked a buggy at Piggly Wiggly that was whomperjawed.” There ain’t a Bubba or Sissy in Alabama that would be flustered trying to explain these phrases to a foreigner from Illinois.

The following is a simple primer about words and phrases we use in ever day speaking. Feel free to send it to your cousin, Matilda, in Hoboken. Just don’t invite her down here to stay. Matilda would have to slip up on the gourd dipper to get a drink of water.  And don’t say that “you got a good mind to invite her.” She wouldn’t understand the phrase “a good mind to.”

Down here, we don’t have toilets. We have commodes. Somebody that has too much to drink is said to be “all tore up.” In place of the word all, you can replace it with “plumb.” The proper sentence would be: “The old boy got plumb tore up and ended up hugging the commode for half the night.”

Most northerners think that the verb “cut” means to slice something by using a knife. Obviously, they were never sent to the peach tree to “cut a switch.” If more northerners had Mamas that made them cut their own switch, our northern cities wouldn’t be in the shape that they are in today. Only Mamas and Grannies used switches. There was a strategy to cutting a switch. It was usually broken from the tree or bush rather than cut with a knife or hatchet. You didn’t want it too keen, or it would bring blood. Too thick and it would bruise you. Very few of us avoided Mama’s switches and we got less than 20% of the ones that we should have gotten.

The other use of “cut” meant to stop. “Cut that out or your eyes will stay crossed like that for the rest of your life.” When Daddy told my brother or me to “cut something out” (like picking on our sister), you better believe that it was “cut out.”

In the South, we collected “lightening bugs.” To my knowledge, I never caught a “firefly” in a jar. Just lightening bugs. I often wonder if yankees know what we mean when we talk about our “stomping grounds.” Do they have those in Delaware? You want to have their heads spinning like a top? Tell them to “go ovair and get the pigsticker that’s upunder the bed.” You have to have a PHD to understand that Southern phrase. Of course, PHD stands for Poor, Hungry and Determined.

As Southern Americans, we have unique names to describe our food. We don’t eat sandwich bread. We eat loaf bread, light bread or white bread. We don’t eat tomatoes. We devour “maters.” Nothing is better in the summer than a mater sammich on loaf bread, slathered with Duke’s man-aze. We all know that the man-aze is kept in the ice box instead of the refrigerator. Up north, the end of the loaf bread is called the heel. Not down Here: it’s the butt.

There are a few mandatory kitchen items that would never be found in New Jersey. Every stove has an old coffee can or cup that is filled with “bacon drippings” or “bacon grease.” It can be any kind of leftover grease from pork.  We call it bacon drippings. It is required to add flavoring to peas, cornbread, cabbage, turnip greens and hopping john. (Hopping John is not your uncle John who ate too many pinto beans.) To make homemade biscuits like my brother and brother-in-law, it is necessary to have an empty Vienna Sausage can or soup can to cut the biscuits from the dough. A small hole will always be found in the top of the can to prevent a vacuum when the biscuits are cut out.

Any type of yellow spread that goes on cornbread is called “butter.” It can be margarine (which is one molecule away from plastic), spread or real butter. To us, it’s all butter. My Grandmother Hancock called it all “oleo.” She would also talk about somebody being “slower than molasses.” Now that’s slow. Her other phrase was that somebody was “getting on her last nerve.” I’m not sure how many nerves she had but since 8 of her 9 Grandkids were boys, I now understand her statement.

In the South, “ugly” has nothing to do with your appearance. It has to do with your actions, IF they are negative. Your Mama would tell you before church: “Y’all better not be ugly in church today.” If any of us were acting ugly in front of our friend’s mama, she had permission to “wear us out.” Of course, if that ever happened, we got 2 more at home. One with a switch; the other with a belt. In other words, we didn’t dare act ugly (or at least get caught being ugly.) (In full disclosure, none of our parents to my knowledge, ever abused any of us growing up through over-disciplining. There was too much admiration, and we knew that our parents made the rules, as long as we put our feet under their table.)    

Not long ago, I had a friend talking about getting stung by some yellow jackets. He said: “I got all boogered up when I fell running from them.” Being boogered up has nothing to do with picking your nose. It means that your knees look like they have been run through a meat grinder. After he poured diesel fuel down the yellow jacket hole, he said that they were “deader than a doornail.” I never knew that doornails once had a life.

In the SEC, they say that “It Just Means More.”

WE can also say the same about our accent.