Appalachian Phrase Origin

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Edwin Lacey from Carmel, Indiana.

Great. Well, what can we do for you?

We are looking for the origin of a Southern Appalachian phrase that I have heard. It is said when you see someone who looks like they don’t feel very well, you say, my goodness, you look like Beth eating a cracker. Or if they look really bad, you say, you look like death eating a cracker walking backwards.

How long have you been hearing this?

Oh, years and years.

People are saying it to you?

Oh, no, no. No one said it to me in a long time.

Oh, good.

Which is good.

So they’re just talking about like a regular old saltine?

That’s my understanding.

Boy, what a great expression. I mean, you really do get a visual, don’t you?

You sure do.

But why is death eating a cracker?

I have no idea.

Yeah, so I can understand. That’s what I was hoping you guys would help with.

Yeah, somebody looks like death, and they look terrible, right? They look like they’ve been brought back up out of the earth after dying or something, right?

Right.

But I don’t get the cracker. Is his mouth parched? Is he particularly dry-lipped or something? I don’t understand. Is the cracker making him pucker up weirdly?

Well, yeah, the image I get is that a cracker is kind of dry and tasteless. I mean, it’s not like they say you look like death eating an ice cream cone, you know.

No.

Yeah, I think it has to do with just the dryness and blandness of it. But death eating a cracker walking backwards, I’ve never heard. I mean, to me, it sounds like an elaboration, you know, just in the wonderful way that you hear in southern Appalachia when people are elaborating on something.

You know, the expression, you look pale as death, that kind of thing goes back to the 16th century or so. And I could see where that idea might have been elaborated. Either death, like the image of death being skeletal with the hood and everything, maybe eating a cracker. That’s what comes to mind when I hear it.

The earliest use I can find of it is in 1962.

Oh, it’s got to be older than that, wouldn’t you think?

I don’t know. All I’m looking at is the printed records. It’s stuffed into B-oral for a long time before it makes it onto the page. And it’s a book by Davis Grubb. That’s G-R-U-B-B. It’s called Voices of Glory. He was a West Virginia fellow. So not quite Appalachia, but he wrote about a small town called Glory. And it’s a bunch of tales about the people who lived there. And he used the phrase in the book. He described somebody exactly like that. They looked like death eating a cracker.

So I don’t know much about this. It’s an interesting phrase to share. I’d be curious to find out if anybody can trace it back further. Do you remember from the 1940s? Is it something that your grandpa used to say, or is there some writing? It seems kind of almost Twain’s-ian, right? Like a kind of thing that Mark Twain would say, or Bret Hart, or somebody from that era. You know, there’s so many wonderful expressions like that from that area.

My dad was from western North Carolina in the hills, and when somebody looked really shocked, just pale and stricken, he would say, he looked like somebody threw a quart of buttermilk in his face. Have you heard that one? You have heard that one?

Oh!

Well, I bet you have a whole bunch of those in your repertoire.

Well, we welcome email from our listeners or calls about death-eating a cracker. If you know a little more about it or you want to share where you first heard it, by all means, send us an email to words@waywordradio.org or give us a call, 1-877-929-9673.

Edwin, thank you so much for calling us about this today.

Thank you. I enjoyed being on the show.

All right.

My pleasure. Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.