Folklore: favorite southern US expression

Subject: RE: Folklore: favorite southern US expression
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 04:27 PM

Shit fire and save matches
Don't know jackshit from applebutter

Subject: RE: Folklore: favorite southern US expression
From: Barbara
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 05:05 PM

Ain't worth sickum (not important enough to sic your dog on)
Don't that just rot your socks? (incredulity)
Just spittin' (light rain)

Blessings,
Barbara

Subject: RE: Folklore: favorite southern US expression
From: kendall
Date: 19 Dec 08 - 09:44 PM

Well, he like to have shit a well rope.

Subject: RE: Folklore: favorite southern US expression
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 04 Jan 09 - 05:21 AM

grab a sit down
or
have a sit down

(Take a seat)

Subject: RE: Folklore: favorite southern US expression
From: GUEST,Debbie C
Date: 04 Jan 09 - 02:50 PM

I think I've lost my rabbit (or rabid) ass mind!

Subject: RE: Folklore: favorite southern US expression
From: GUEST,Debbie C
Date: 04 Jan 09 - 02:59 PM

Well now, if that don't beat a hen a rootin'!

Subject: RE: Folklore: favorite southern US expression
From: GUEST,Debbie C
Date: 04 Jan 09 - 03:02 PM

It's so cold, it would freeze the balls off a brass monkey!

Subject: RE: Folklore: favorite southern US expression
From: Bush-man
Date: 04 Jan 09 - 03:40 PM

I always liked...... "shinier n' a pewter dollar in a mudhole"

Subject: RE: Folklore: favorite southern US expression
From: GUEST,GUEST
Date: 06 Jan 09 - 10:45 PM

Here are two my grandmother (Northern Neck of Virginia) would say:

"Smells like something crawled up inside you and died" (if someone let loose with a real stinker)

"Fidgeting like you got an ant up your rear with a bed bug chasing it." (said of a hyperactive child, especially in church!)

She also used an expression which sounded like "Jummin," as in "Jummin knows, I've tried to talk to him but he won't listen." As best I can tell it's short for "The gentleman knows" or maybe "God knows" but I've never heard it outside of the Tidewater area.

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Subject: RE: Folklore: favorite southern US expression
From: Janie
Date: 07 Jan 09 - 12:29 AM

To a fidgety child, What's wrong, you got a worm caught sideways?

Subject: RE: Folklore: favorite southern US expression
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 07 Jan 09 - 01:31 AM

His eyes looked like two pee-holes in the snow.

Had eyes like two bubbles in a pisspot.

Couldn't pour piss out of a boot with the directions on the heel.

Useless as the tits on a boar hog.

Don't know shit from apple butter.

Don't know shit from Shinola.

My Mom always used the word "onery". Usually it meant lowdown, nasty. "Don't use such onery language!" I suppose it was some form of "ornery".

Subject: RE: Folklore: favorite southern US expression
From: GUEST,seth in Olympia
Date: 07 Jan 09 - 05:35 AM

My grandmother never knew of a place called Ha-y-e. She said " I never been to Ha-woy-a, and I sure hopin' to get there before I pass on" Thanks to her, I still say "icebox". The only other time I heard that pronunciation of "Hawaii" is in an old Jimmy Rodgers song.

Subject: RE: Folklore: favorite southern US expression
From: GUEST,cockalo
Date: 07 May 10 - 11:09 PM

My grandmother was a wealth of southern expressions. She would use the word "chunkin" which means to throw something. For example "Them boys are chunkin apples again."

This next one is a two for one: working medicine" and "yesdiddy". When the nurse asked what medicine she had taken, my grandmother replied "I took some workin' medicine yes'diddy." Translation: I took a laxative yesterday.

And when we were moving too slowly for her, my grandmother would say, "Y'all make haste!"

Subject: RE: Folklore: favorite southern US expression
From: Mike in Brunswick
Date: 07 May 10 - 11:45 PM

Said disapprovingly of someone who has adopted a superior air.
"He's walkin' around like his poop don't stink."

I don't know how widespread it is. I heard it from a woman from North Carolina.

Mike

Subject: RE: Folklore: favorite southern US expression
From: GUEST,The South
Date: 23 Dec 10 - 10:27 AM

Grew up in the south. I have heard some of the things listed here, but for the most part it seems like you guys just thought up the most illiterate things you could think of, spelled it weird, and encourage people to say it slow. Only the oldest and most rural of people talk like that.

Subject: RE: Folklore: favorite southern US expression
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 23 Dec 10 - 12:49 PM

Well now, Guest the South, I reckon you are probably correct. I heard my Grandparents, who were rural Kentuckians born before 1900, use lots of colorful expressions. These expressions were less common with my parents, and I suppose I hardly hear or use them nowadays. So, yeah, the old rural folks used more of this language than Southerners do today. I reckon you could say it's due to education and higher breeding, but I think it's got more to do with the pervasive force of television and other mass popular culture, which has given us all a more uniform and far less interesting way of speaking, in my opinion.

You may see such a change as a positive trend. I however think we are losing something of our heritage, and I think this thread is a small attempt to preserve the way these folks spoke, and not an attempt to picture them as ignorant or backwards.