I absolutely adore being a Southern girl! I embrace my roots; roots that dig down deep into the gentle slopping mountains of South Eastern Tennessee. We have a certain way of speaking with slow, soft accents that lilt and soothe like a sweet, sweet lullaby and we have a vocabulary that is all our own. I just wanted to celebrate that way of speaking for a little bit….so y’all indulge me a bit.
Y’all”, “You’ens” “All y’all (a large group of folks)” prevail….but we have other sayins that are just as colorful: “Down yonder in the holler,” and “Nervous as a long-tailed Tom-Cat in a room full’o rocking chairs” …..come to mind. You don’t push buttons here, you “mash ‘em” and you can tote your groceries home in a paper poke or sack, instead of a paper bag. You can hear folks disciplining their children, as in….“I’m gonna switch them little laigs if you don’t behave!”) or just loving on their youngins, as in …“Come here to Mamaw and let me hug yore neck!” Food can be called vittles; a bad storm is called a “toad-strangler” and kids who are rough-housing are said to be “sky-larkin.” A pretty girl is “fetchin” and when she spends all morning primping, she’s gotten herself “all gussied up!” There are tons of ways to describe a dating relationship: sparkin, courting, wooing, and of course, just going-out. We warsh our clothes instead of washing them and we use warsh rags to clean with. We wear britches (not just pants) or maybe dungarees (instead of jeans) and on our feet you’ll either find flip-flops or tennie-shoes (not tennis shoes, mind you…but tennie shoes).
Thinking about things my Mamaw and Papaw used to say that were uniquely Southern, food is the category that likely wins for being the most colorful. I’ll list a few examples (along with a translation for my friends who are not fortunate enough to speak fluent Southern…wink-wink!)
My Mamaw would shuck, silk and boil up what she called “roastineers” and serve them slathered in pools of butter and sprinkled with just enough salt. Roastineers are actually “Roasting Ears”…..referring to ears of corn. Nothing goes with roastineers better than “Arsh-Taters.” Arsh-Taters are actually Irish potatoes…..or just plain old white potatoes. Not to be confused with Sweet-Taters or New-Taters. Arsh-Taters could be baked, boiled, mashed, fried, or cut up into cubes and mixed up into Tater-Salad. And to drink, you either got Sweet Tea or you got Sweet Milk. Now, Sweet Milk is just regular old white milk…..but it’s called Sweet Milk to distinguish it from Buttermilk.
Now, another thing we like is our greens. “Greens” can mean Turnip-Greens, Mustard-Greens, Spinach or even something called Poke-Sallot. Poke-Sallot (or Poke Salad) is nothing more than a weed that grows wild around here, usually along fence-rows. I have actually seen people stop on the side of the road to pick Poke-Sallot from a ditch. Another thing about greens…you never have a serving of greens, nor a cooking of greens or a pot of greens…..it’s always, always called a “Mess” of greens. You can also have a mess of beans. I don’t really know why, but that’s just how it is. Now, greens are usually seasoned with something called fat-back….or in the very least some bacon-grease that you saved in your “renderin pot”. A renderin-pot is a container that’s kept in the kitchen…usually near the stove and every time you cook bacon or fry up anything in a skillet, you pour the grease off of the pan into the renderin pot….and then you use the renderins to season your food. I’ve seen fancy renderin pots that look kind of like teapots and I’ve seen a renderin pot made from an old tin can. So long as it’s full of clean, flavorful grease, you’re good to go! Renderins give flavor to just about anything you can imagine……I always saw my Mamaw use it to season her greens and her green beans.
We also have Lightbread. Lightbread is just white-bread, you know, that comes in a loaf from the grocery store. And “fixins”….which just means side-dish. For breakfast, my Mamaw made biscuits…from scratch…almost every single morning of my childhood. She would save the last biscuit…the one that she made from the left-over dough after she cut out the rest of the biscuits. This would be a large, lumpy biscuit (unlike all the others that she cut out from the same batch, which were perfectly round and uniform). That was the biscuit she designated as her “Soakey-Bisket.” She would put that biscuit into a saucer and pour a little bit of coffee mixed with milk over the biscuit and let it get soft and then she would eat it with a spoon. I was not personally a fan of the soakey-bisket….to me it was a soggy hot-mess, but my Mamaw loved her Soakey-Biskets. She would also make a breakfast dish for my Papaw, which was one of his all-time favorites: Pork Brains and Scrambled Eggs. I think that this dish is why I refused to eat scrambled eggs for so long. I could not stomach the though of the scrambled pork brains. But it was a breakfast food staple on our table when my Papaw was living….he had it at least once a week as far back as I can remember. One thing that I did love to do was “sop my biscuit”….usually in a mixture of molasses or sorghum syrup mixed with butter. You’d pour a bit of the syrup on your plate, put a lump of butter in it and use your fork to mash the butter up and mix it with the syrup until it turned the color of honey…then take pieces of your biscuit and “sop it up.” It can get messy, but that’s part of what makes it so good.
We had other typical “Southern Foods”, although to us then, it was just….FOOD. Cornbread, fried okra, pickled okra, (note: around my house….okra was never pronounced as Ok-ra….it was pronounced “Ok-rey”) black-eyed peas, fried chicken, candied sweet taters, Mamaw’s fried pies, crackling bread, greens, chow-chow, ‘nanner pudding, teacakes (which was what my Mamaw called sugar-cookies), chicken-n-dumplins, chicken-n-dressin, gravy and biscuits, green beans with new taters, pinto beans….this list could go on for days and days. There were also some other foods that, while they aren’t necessarily “Southern,” I grew up eating. These foods remind me of my childhood: Spam on a Saltine Cracker with a smear of mustard, Vienna Sausages (also served on a Saltine with mustard), an ice-cold Coca-Cola (in a bottle) with peanuts poured in, Moon Pies, sugar-wafer cookies, Kool-Aid (served in a Dixie cup, no less!), Icee-man icees, pig-in-a-poke (a weenie wrapped in biscuit dough), with grape licorice, and cucumbers and onions in vinegar. (My Mamaw would cut up a cucumber and an onion, sprinkle them with a little salt and pepper and pour a few tablespoons of vinegar over them and let them set on the table in a saucer….best thing EVER with a piece of hot cornbread!)
It’s not just the food that’s distinctly Southern, but how we talk about the food. If we have a fancy meal, we say that we’re “Eatin high on the hog!” and if something is very delicious, it’s “So good we could swaller it whole!” If you eat and eat and eat and make a pig of yourself, my Papaw would ask you if you had a “holler-laig” (Hollow leg….a place where you could store the extra food you were eating). If you were really hungry….I mean starving…you could say, “I’m so hongry that my belly is ticklin my backbone!”
And many things that SOUNDED like they might be about food, weren’t about food a-toll (at all). Give me some Sugar (usually pronounces as “Sugah”) just meant that you wanted a kiss. A Sugar-Tit is a baby’s pacifier. Evidently, hailing from the days before the modern manufactured pacifier when Mommas used to take a lump of sugar and wrap it up in a rag and give it to a fussy baby to suck on. If somebody says that they’re not a spring chicken…..that just means that they are not as young as they used to be. And if somebody asks you, “Jeet Yet?” What they really want to know is if you have eaten already. Or if they ask you if you want “Sumthin Teet” …just let them know if you are hongry and they’ll feed ya!! If somebody asked to see your “Tater-eye”….they’re talking about your belly-button….but don’t worry….tater-eye talk is usually reserved for youngins, as it would be considered rude to ask an adult to see their tater-eye.
Sometimes, I suppose it could be hard to follow a conversation if you aren’t familiar with some of the phrases and slang we Southerners use to salt and pepper our talk. We tend to have some odd ways of saying things sometimes. For example: “Ms. Sally is really going down since she lost her Wilber; being a widderwoman ain’t settin well with her. I saw her down at tha washaterrier where she was warshin her quilts and she has fell off something terrible and was purt-near lookin poorly.” If you understood that Ms. Sally was observed at the laundry matt washing her quilts and looking like she was in poor health after losing her husband….you are pretty good at deciphering Southernisms.
We have lots of ways of saying things. Purt-Near, Right-Near, Di-reckly, Fixin-to, and Near-Bout….all of these mean “soon.” If you are very, very upset, you can: pitch-a-fit, throw-a-fit, act like you ain’t got a lick-o-sense, have-a-hissy, carry-on like, have-a-conniption, cause a cattywampus, get bowed-up, or commence-ta-squallin or get all-tore-up. If you need to get somewhere quickly, you can go: Lickity-split, skedaddlin, go-ta-gettin-in, high-tail it, or a mile-a-minute.
If you need to insult someone….there are many, many ways to do so. You can tell someone that they are “too big fer their britches”, that they are dilatory, that they are piddlin, uppity, no-a-count varmint, as ugly as the backside of a mule and just as stubborn……well, you get the general idea. Pretty much quote any Fog-Horn-Leg-Horn diatribe and you are in business! Haha!
There are ways to say things that sound almost like what you’d call them: tundershirt (undershirt), tee-niney (tiny), Air-up the tars (fill the tires with air), tump (dump), afore (before), agonna (going to), tabacky (tobacco), Bammer (Alabama), bee-ins (being as), Bobwar (barbed wire), borry (borrow), his’n (his), yourn (yours), Ida Claire (I declare), idear (idea), get a holt (get a hold), look in the meer (mirror), done got kilt (was killed), don’t nome atoll. (don’t know him at all), yousta (used to), ryecheer (right here), warn’t (wasn’t), em air (them there), orta (ought to), toad (told), tornader (tornado), septin fer (except for), ranch (wrench), nary-a-one (none), figure-on (plan on), and hear-tell (heard).
I could go on and on…but you get the general idea. There are a few phrases that I have no idea about the origin of…but they crack me up none-the-less. If a toddler has “Granny Beads”…they have sweat and dirt beaded up underneath their sweet little neck fat. “Where in the tarnation”…..guess it’s a shortened form of “Where in the entire nation.” Dadburnit! It can be used interchangeably with a curse-word…I suppose it’s just a nicer way to say it. If somebody is “high-falutin” then they are either very wealthy…or they are acting like they are. Another way to say that we’re wealthy would be to say, “We’re in high cotton!” Another phrase that I like is “Smack-Dab”… as in…RIGHT there! Let go is “turn-a-loose” and if you are pretending, maybe you’re just “playin possum.” There are other words and phrases too…..such as “egg-on”, “whoop”, “consarned”, “she’s such a cut-up,” “fasten up yore gassuses,” “swaller it down yer goozle,” “think you’re seeing haints!” (ghosts), “don’t trust the gubmint” (government), I’s kin-to him (we’re related), Lookey! (see?) and seeins-how (seeing how…).
This post is getting long….but I thought up a bunch more and just HAVE To include them: Barkin up the wrong tree, Chugged full, Madder ‘en an old wet hen, Fly off the handle, Get the short end of the stick, Go to bed with the chickens, Scarce as hen’s teeth (funny how a lot of these have to do with chickens, huh? Haha!), My old stompin grounds, A sight for sore eyes, I aim to, Clod hoppers, Fixin to, a Fallin out, Wait on (as in, she’s the girl who’s gonna wait on me and take my food order), This ain’t my first rodeo, Up a creek without a paddle, You’re getting above yer raisin, Dad-gumm-it, Ain’t worth a plug nickel, If that don’t beat a hen a peckin (and we’re BACK to the chickens!), Don’t count your chickens before they hatch, Hosepipe (water hose), Swannee (or I’ll be Swannee), Skin you alive, Been rode hard and put up wet, So poor didn’t have a pot to pee in or no where to pitch it, Flatter’ en a flitter, Play purty (toy), Whistle-britches, She looks like death warmed over, Ugly as homemade sin, Full as a tick, Sit a spell, and Get on ‘em like a duck on a junebug.
Okay. I could probably go on for another 3 pages…..but I’m tired of writing and you’re probably tired of reading…so I will call it here. Needless to say, it’s a subject near and dear to my Southern heart! <3
