farmer blow
n.— «“I was in 4-H and FFA, a total farm girl. That helped in the Army, kind of a roughneck thing,” she says and launches into a description about a friend in her military unit, “the prissiest thing you’d ever want to see.” “I taught her how to spit, do the farmer blow,” she says and mimics blowing her nose with her fingers.» —“Injuries don’t faze tough-as-metal South Dakotan” by Peter Harriman Associated Press Feb. 13, 2004. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Loretta in Shreveport, Louisiana, wants to know what lexical and dialectal clues linguists look for when guessing where someone is from. She also wonders: Do people with long careers in the military or who grew up in a military family have a...
A hundred years ago, suffragists lobbied to win women the right to vote. Linguistically speaking, though, suffrage isn’t about “suffering.” It’s from a Latin word that involves voting. Plus: military cadences often include...