Not common here, but “happy as a pig in sh—” is pretty common.
Most of the examples listed in your last posting have become generalized through the country…
Of course! Everybody wants to talk this way.
“packy”
A packy is either a “liquor store” or an “ABC store” (Alcoholic Beverage Control, I think). When I worked as a waiter in college, we had “brown bagging,” where you had to bring you on liquor to a bar or restaurant, turn it in to the bartender or hostess, and then order drinks from your own bottle. It was a little crazy. The establishment could be fined if an ABC inspector came in and found a bottle without someone’s name on it.
Mini-bottles came next and were a welcomed relief. Then came liquor by the drink. I think that serving alcohol on Sunday is legal now, but very recently so.
Hillbillies never had a true educational system to become disabled, and I doubt that more and more people are talking that way. Admittedly, people are not as careful with grammar and usage as they once were, by you have to get pretty far up in the hills to hear most of the examples I’ve posted.
Yes, many of these expressions are commonly known. One reason is that the Southern dialect is colorful. Another is that Southerners are an easy target for dialectical humor.
However, I have worked with clients from other parts of the country who have never heard some of our common expressions, such as “It’s coming up a cloud.” Also, a client from Boston had never heard “might could” and “might would.” She said that, to be so polite, we were extremely non-committal.
Note that debbymoge has an avatar. It’s hard to tell in the dark, but I think she looks a little peeked—a word that Southerners use to mean pale. Both syllalbles are pronounced (peek-ed). Anyone else use this one?
My grandmother used an expression of surprise that sounded very much like “day law” (the second word was several seconds in duration). I assume that this is a variant of “the Lord,” since older people also say, “Law have mercy.” And they’re not referring to the police.
Note that debbymoge has an avatar. It’s hard to tell in the dark, but I think she looks a little peeked—a word that Southerners use to mean pale. Both syllalbles are pronounced (peek-ed). Anyone else use this one?
yes.
You keep claiming perfectly good terms used all over as particularly “southern” - getting really arrogant here, like your protege, St. Paul.
I seen it first.
I was watching that there channel first! MOM!
These are not just southern, Wiki needs to get its facts straight, which is one reason I do not rely too much on Wiki.
To reply to two of you at oncet, this “youngun” is mighty damn old today, and Wiki is an interesting idea… “facts” by common consensus instead of by expertise.
BTW, advertisement.
AD vertise, but we say adVERT isment, not adverTISement
also, in the first and third, the “s” is a “z” but in the second it is an “s”.
Here in land west of the oxbow, one hears both ADvertisement and adVERTisement.
Since I have lived only in the South, I cannot say that all of my examples are exclusively Southern. However, I can only surmise that these many of these expressions began here and went “that-a-way.” Steinbeck traced the journey west for the Joad family and many more like them in The Grapes of Wrath, and that was only one western movement among many.
And when you consider that most western settlers were “the tired”, “the poor,” and the “huddled masses” instead on the New York and Philadelphia elite, it becomes clearer why there are similarities in dialect among the uneducated all across the country. Some have spread to the educated as well.
