A former West Virginian reports that she grew up hearing a strange word: charny. In her part of the country, she says, it means “dirty” or “filthy,” and she always heard it pronounced “chee-YAR-nee.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of ““Charny” Means Dirty or Filthy in Southern US Dialects”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, I’m Cheryl from Indianapolis.
Hi, Cheryl.
Hello, Cheryl.
Hi.
Welcome.
Thank you.
I’m curious about the origins of a word, and the word is charney. It’s a word that we used where I grew up in southwestern West Virginia, and we used it to indicate if something was very dirty and needed cleaning, such as, oh, my house is charny, and it would be in disarray and a big mess. And so I was just curious if you had ever heard of that word or knew of the origins.
Wow, I love that word. There’s a word often pronounced kjarn or kjarny. Did you ever hear that pronunciation?
No.
What about karn or karen?
I’m familiar with the word karyan.
Right. Like a dead animal. Is that kind of what you’re referring to?
It is, and that’s where all the words that I said come from. And you’ll find a wide variety of dialect pronunciations of this word, a good dozen at least, throughout rural America, especially in the south and what they call the South Midlands, which is basically around the Ohio River Valley down to the northern edge of the true south. And they all do come from the word carrion. And they don’t necessarily mean, you know, dead animal flesh.
Yeah, that’s pretty gross.
They mean dirty or filthy. But my theory then is that your word charny perhaps is just another dialect variation of that same exact word. One of them is K-Y-A-R-N-Y, charny. And it’s so close to what you said.
Oh, yeah, that sounds reasonable. Cheryl, I’m curious about your use of it. Would you use it to describe like a filthy sink or would it be all your clothes all over the room? How do you use?
More of something actually dirty.
Okay.
You know, something that’s actually dirty. I guess if your whole house was dirty and messed up and things were lying about, that would also apply. But usually if something’s like really dirty.
-huh.
And I’ve always described it when I used it in conversation and people didn’t understand what I was talking about or how to pronounce it. If you have the word yarn, like the thread, and replace the Y with a C and then put the EY on the end, that would be charny.
Charny.
Well, there’s something about that Y sound that’s just fabulous, isn’t it? I mean, you can just see the person sort of flicking their hands to get it off of them, metaphorically.
Charney.
Charney.
Don’t you think?
Yeah.
I mean, the nasalness of it is kind of indicative of something.
Yeah.
All right.
Yeah.
All right.
Yeah.
You know, or Grant, you would appreciate it. You know, this diaper’s charney.
Okay.
Well, thank you very much.
All right.
You’re welcome.
Thank you for calling us.
-huh.
Bye-bye.
All right.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Charney.
I love it.
Charney.
Charney.
If you’ve got a regional word or a colloquialism or something they said back at the old homestead, we’d love to hear about it. The number is 1-877-929-9673. Or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.
