Fotched a Heave and Catched a Fall

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Michael from Morgantown, Kentucky.

Hey, Michael, welcome to the show.

What can we do for you?

Well, I got a question for you, and it’s about a story my granddad told me when I was a boy.

So he’s from a little place called Hell’s Neck, Kentucky, which they use words there now that you don’t hear anywhere else in the world.

But he told me a story when he was a kid. This would have been in the 1920s.

There was an old guy that lived down the road, and he said he spoke the old tongue.

I’ve always wondered what the old tongue was, but he told me that they went fishing one day, and they was using cane poles.

So the old guy got a bite, and he grabbed a cane pole and jerked it back over his head.

And when he did, his feet came out from under him, and he slid down into the water.

Well, he turned around to my granddad and he said, I fought to heave and catch the fall.

So I was just kind of wondering, you know, with just that little bit, could you tell me maybe what he meant by the old tongue and what that means?

Say it again for us.

Fought to heave and catch the fall.

Well, that’s just well put.

That’s beautifully said, isn’t it?

It is, yeah.

And I don’t remember a lot of the stories he told me, but that one just always stuck with me.

Yeah, that’s a particularly succinct way of expressing the moment.

You know, I started with a cane pole myself as a boy in southeast Missouri and fishing on a money bank.

Well, you know what I’m talking about, then.

Yeah, I do. I do. Fishing on a money bank. I know that whole feeling.

Trying not to let the turtles get the bait instead of the fish, that sort of stuff.

Yeah, you don’t want that.

You want the fish.

And when he was on that creek bank, you know, he had to set that hook.

So when he did, I mean, I’m sure he reared it way back over his head.

And then that’s all it was.

He went down the bank.

Yeah.

I never did find out if he got the fish or not, but he fought the heave anyway.

Let’s break that down.

I think the most interesting word here is fought for sure, because that’s probably the one people are scratching their head over the most.

And it’s got a long history, more than, well, about 250 years or so.

Botched is an old past tense form of the verb to fetch.

And now fetch typically means, as you know, to go get.

But it also has a bunch of other meanings.

And it can mean things like to fetch up can mean to stop, as in the horse has fetched up lame.

You know, it stopped lame.

Or you can fetch up a child means to raise it or bring it up.

You can fetch a pump means to prime the pump with water, so the pump will begin to pull water up from a well.

You can even fetch around in seafaring.

It means to change course or to attack your sea craft.

It’s an action.

He was describing what he did with the cane pole.

Okay.

Yeah, so when he fetched a heave, that means that he basically did a heave.

He jerked a heave.

So he fetched a heave, basically.

So fetched is just an old-fashioned.

And again, we have Noah Webster himself, the great dictionary maker, noticed Fautched.

And Fautch is far back as 1789 and wrote about it.

So it’s been in the American language for a very long time.

So when you talk about the old tongue, we’re talking about pretty old.

So this guy, which this would have been the 1920s or 30s, because like I said, my granddad was born in 1920.

So this guy was old then, so he could have been more like 1850 or something.

Sure, absolutely.

I probably use words like that all the time.

And for some reason, my granddad remembered it, and now I’m telling you 100 years later.

Yep.

And it’s fading, but you’ll still find folks using it, particularly in the American South and Appalachia.

It’s got a long history, both in the U.S. and the U.K.

It’s rarer than it used to be, but it’s not unknown or unheard anymore.

And then the rest of it, a heave.

Well, a heave can be a jerk or a fall or a quick movement of the whole body.

And then catched is a nonstandard past tense.

So to catch a fall.

And to catch here doesn’t mean that you caught something in your arms or your hand.

It means that you had a moment where something happened to you.

Like catch a breath, for example.

We don’t actually catch the breath.

It means you took a moment for a breath, right?

So if you catched a fall, you had a moment where you had a fall.

Well, that’s very interesting.

I appreciate it.

So there you go, Michael.

Fought to heave and catch to fall.

Fought to heave and catch to fall.

Yeah, that’s it.

That’s it.

Well, you’re the expert.

That’s why I called.

Well, Michael, I think you’re an expert when it comes to great stories.

I’m sure you’ve got more, and we’d love to have you call again sometime.

If I remember any more, I’ll call back.

Please do, Michael.

Take care.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you.

Be well.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673, or talk to us on Twitter @wayword.