Transcript of “A Croaking Bloodynoun”
I was randomly paging through the Dictionary of American Regional English, which I am wont to do from time to time, and I came across a word that at first kind of jarred me, kind of shocked me.
The term was bloody noun.
Bloody noun?
Yes.
It’s all one word, bloody noun.
And, you know, as a language person, I was thinking, what? That sounds terrible. Can we talk about this?
We can.
We can.
And in fact, probably our South Carolina listeners know where I’m going with this, because it turns out that bloody noun or blood noun is a very large bullfrog. It makes that deep sound that sort of sounds like bloody noun. And that word may come from the Gullah language. There’s a word, bloody noun, which is a word for that kind of frog.
From the Gullah language.
Lovely.
I want to hear the bullfrog sound, Martha.
Oh, I think you’d be so much better at that than me. I’ve never heard it.
You’re in charge of this part of the show, Martha.
Okay, South Carolina, let us know what a bloody noun sounds like.
