When working on a construction site in Kentucky, Te’koa from Norfolk, Virginia, heard someone use the term si-gogglin to describe something that’s “crooked,” or “curvy.” Variants heard primarily in Appalachia include si-goggling, sidegogglin, sidegadling, and sidegartlin’. These adjectives apparently arose from a family of dialectal terms in England and Scotland, where verbs like coggle and goggle refer to the idea of causing something to wobble or sway or totter. Other dialectal terms to describe something similarly “off-kilter” include whompy-jawed and cattywampus. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Dialect Adjectives that Mean Skewed or Crooked”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Sikoa.
I’m calling from Norfolk, Virginia right now.
Nice to talk to you. What’s up?
I had a question about a word that’s from where I’m from, from a place called Monticello, Kentucky. The word is sigoglin. So it’s spelled S-I-G-O-G-G-L-I-N-G from the best I can tell. And it’s typically taken in that crooked or anything that’s curvy, often used like job sites and things like that about, you know, it’s like a wall or a building project is a little sigoglin.
Huh. So is it a negative thing then?
Yeah, typically it’s a negative thing, you know, like saying that something is like too crooked or bent in a way that it shouldn’t be. So like if in my home, like if there’s a picture frame on the wall that’s a little bit crooked, I would say it’s Cy Goglin?
No, it’s typically like a road that’s like curvy, like unnaturally, or like a wall that has multiple curves in it.
Oh, okay. Okay. And do you work in construction?
Yeah, yeah, I had. I worked in construction for a while, and it was a pretty common term from some of the older guys.
Okay, well, this is fascinating to me because I’ve seen this term in print for years, but it’s really nice to talk to somebody who uses it. And it seems to be related to a family of dialectal terms in England and Scotland that include the verbs goggle or coggle, and it has to do with the idea of causing something to wobble or sway or totter. It’s the words that kind of sound like what they mean. And my sense of Psygodlin was more like something was crooked.
This is a really interesting sense that you are bringing to us. I’ve seen it spelled lots of different ways, like Psygodlin and Psygadlin, Psygartlin, Psywadlin. But my sense is it has to do with crookedness.
Yeah, yeah. That’s typically what I took it to mean and, like, what it was meant for, like, on job sites.
That’s really fascinating. Yeah, it goes all the way back to England and Scotland. There’s a whole family of words like that that are a whole collection of words like that that we use to describe that kind of situation, like whompy jawed and catawampus. But Cygoglin is a great one.
Do you use any of those?
Yeah, catawampus is another really big one from more of like the south kind of area.
Yeah, well, you hear these primarily in Appalachia. For you, is catawampus different from Saigoglin?
No, catawampus would be the same thing. It would be taken to mean something is also like off-kilter as another common one. Yeah, something is like wrong in a way that it shouldn’t be.
Well, I’m really interested to hear that it’s something that you use all the time in that work.
Yeah, yeah. Well, that’s pretty much what we know about it.
Yeah, that’s really interesting. Thank you. I didn’t know that it actually dated back that far. I thought it was something made up.
Thanks, Tekoa.
All right. Thank you.
All right. Thanks for calling. Well, whatever you do, there’s strange language, and we’d like to talk about it. 877-929-9673. Email us words@waywordradio.org or talk to us on Twitter @wayword.
