The multipurpose phrase bless your heart is heard often in the southern United States. Although it sounds polite and solicitous, it often has a cutting edge to it. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “”Bless Your Heart,” A Cutting Phrase”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Tom Donovan from Dallas, Texas.
Hi, Tom. Welcome to the show.
Well, I had a word that had been in my family for years and years. My grandmother used to say it, and it’s basically, bless your heart. And she had many, many applications for it. Generally speaking, it was for sympathy, I thought, but then I come to find out sometimes it was about, well, you should have known that. I was wondering if you’d ever heard that before.
Have we heard it before? So bless your heart. So set up the situation for us. What’s going on when that comes up?
Well, I’d tell my grandmother that I had a problem at school or something, and she would say, well, bless your heart, and then go into sort of how to address it. But it was always sort of a message, I thought, of sympathy. But the older I got, I come to find out, I think she thought maybe I was a little slow.
Oh, yeah. I love that one. I grew up saying that myself. In fact, I think of it as sort of the Southern Bell Swiss Army knife. There are so many different ways that you can use it. And in fact, during the most recent presidential primary, you might have seen an exchange where Donald Trump was criticizing the governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley, on Twitter. He said, the people of South Carolina are embarrassed by Nikki Haley. And she just responded, bless your heart.
Well, that was very effective use. That’s right. Yeah. It’s so common now that it’s widely discussed even outside the South as one of those markers of Southern speech that you’ve got to look for because it sounds polite at first, but there may be a second or third layer underneath.
Well, thank you very much for that. Well, sure. We’re glad to help. Thanks for calling, Tom. Really appreciate it. Thank you so much, and have a great day.
You too. Take care. All righty. Bye-bye.
I get what he’s saying. Probably his grandma meant his sympathy, though, right? He had a tough day. He was telling her about it.
Yeah. She’s like, oh, bless your heart. Yeah. I mean, it really is like a Swiss Army knife. There’s so many different uses. But the other one, the cutting one, the knife-edged one, that one is where you’re like, I’ve lost the car in the mall parking lot, and it’s been three days, and I can’t find it. And someone says to you, bless your heart, which just means you’re as dumb as a stump.
Right. It’s sort of like, whose fault is that? Yeah, there’s the knife version and the nail file version.
