Fat Wood and Fat Lighter

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Tom Price calling from Troy, Alabama.

Hey Tom, we’re glad to have you. What’s on your mind?

I was brought up in the Detroit, Michigan area. So all through 18 years, I lived up there and then I met a woman while I was in the Navy. And she’s a native of Troy, Alabama.

And one of the expressions that she used, I’m sure she got it from her father, was bat lighter. And this term referred to, for example, an old house that was made of pine wood, like two by fours and such, probably southern yellow pine. But as the wood got old, they would say it turned to fat lighter, which means that it pretty much dried out a lot and became highly flammable. Maybe due to the extent of the pine resins in the wood. But I had never heard that fat lighter before.

Yeah, yeah, that’s definitely exactly where I’d expect to see that. So Troy, Alabama is in northern Alabama, right?

No, it’s south. It’s between Montgomery and Dothan.

Oh, it’s in the south. Gotcha.

Southeast, yeah.

So two words, fat, F-A-T, lighter, L-I-G-H-T-E-R. And there are a couple interesting things about this, three interesting things. One is there are a ton of phrases or terms for this. So you might see it as fat lighter or fat would or light would. Sometimes it’s called fat pine and fat lightered.

So it’s lighter with a D at the end.

Yes, I’ve heard that one mentioned also.

Yeah, variants on that. And you’ll find that definitely in Georgia, South Atlantic and Gulf states, up to Virginia, coastal plain, southern coastal plain into lower Vermont, Florida, Georgia. And all of these places share kind of this history of providing resin for tar for a variety of purposes. I mean, this region was incredibly common to provide tar for shipping and for a variety of other purposes, just historically.

Maybe turpentine?

Yes, exactly. The turpentine belt is what it was known as for a long time. But the other thing that’s really interesting to me about this is that now we think of that lighter part about using that resin-rich wood. That’s really what we’re talking about. All of these pine woods are just soaked in resin, and they burn very freely. And we think about using them as to start a fire. But the lighter part originally was because they gave a lot of light. That’s why the light is in there. It wasn’t about lighting a fire. It was about giving light. So it’s a different origin for that, the L-I-G-H-T that’s in the word.

Yeah.

But it goes back quite a way, but it’s really particular just to that part of the country, you know, those Gulf states and the South Atlantic states.

All right, then.

Yeah.

It makes sense, doesn’t it, Tom?

Yeah, you’ll occasionally find it maybe in Tennessee and Arkansas, maybe. But it just doesn’t really get much further than that.

Probably why I never heard it in the Detroit area of Michigan.

Yeah, not much call for it there. Well, Tom, thank you so much for calling and asking that question. If any more come up, let us know.

I’d be happy to.

Thank you.

All right.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Okay, bye.

If you want to talk about language, that’s resin enough to call us, 877-929-9673, or email us, words@waywordradio.org.