When Matt was growing up in western North Carolina, he heard the word gaum, also spelled gom, meaning a mess. Someone misbehaving might be described as gauming around, or something was gaumed up, meaning messed up, or a person was dismissed as simply a gaum. He also heard the exclamation They! used to mean Wow! Most likely this use of the word they, along with the exclamations “They Lord!” and “They God!,” is a variation of “There!,” which is used for emphasis. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Gauming Around”
Hello, welcome to A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Matt from Dallas, Texas.
Hi, Matt. Welcome to the show.
What can we do for you, Matt?
I grew up in western North Carolina, and there was a word that I would hear frequently from what I would call locals there.
And it was a word that they would use in place of, like, saying something as a mess, but it was gom, G-O-M.
And I had never heard this anywhere else, and it was just a strange kind of, I guess, local thing.
But they would use it in different forms.
Like they would say someone is gomming around or something is gommed up or even just calling someone someone is a gomm.
And I’ve never heard of that before, and I just thought it was pretty interesting.
Yeah, gomm meaning to smear or make dirty, something like that.
Yeah, just in many different kind of formats of, you know, being something gommed up.
But yeah, I just never heard it at any other place.
Oh, really? Really? Because it’s found pretty much in that area, West Virginia, Kentucky, Western North Carolina.
And it comes from an old word that I think just has to do with dirt, to gomm something up.
Is it related to gomm, G-U-M?
I don’t think so. No, but it’s usually spelled G-A-U-M.
Oh, G-A-U-M. Okay.
-huh. Yeah. And if you’re gomming around, then you’re misbehaving.
Messing around.
Yeah, messing around. Yeah.
Yeah. It was very, and the area that we were in was very, very kind of full Appalachia.
So I guess that fits in with that whole region through there.
-huh. It’s well attested, well documented in that particular area, but not much of any place else.
But gomming around.
Gomming around, definitely.
There was also another word that in that area that I heard, the use of T-H-E-Y, they, as an exclamation.
Yeah, give us an example.
Our next-door neighbor got a new car, and another neighbor of ours said, when they saw it, they go,
Hey, that’s a beautiful new car.
That was their wow, you know, exclamatory statement.
T-H-E-Y.
And would they make any kind of gesture?
Nothing in particular other than just, you know, a generalized wow.
Mm—
Well, again, this seems to be a North Carolina, North Georgia expression.
Probably is a variant of the word there.
Like, there, look at there.
Something like that.
Okay, yeah.
Sometimes people say, they God, or they Lord, or something like that.
But, yeah, an expression of amazement that you don’t hear much of any place else.
There are a few places in English where we do use there and here as interjections like that, right?
Yeah.
We’ll say, there, I’m all finished.
And I don’t mean there in that spot.
It could be something that’s far away from me.
Or, here now, what are you doing?
Yeah, or my father was from Western North Carolina, and he would say,
Hi-ya.
Hi-ya.
Hi-ya.
Oh, yeah.
Would you hear that?
Yeah, I’ve actually heard that, definitely.
Well, cool, Matt.
Thank you so much for your call.
We really appreciate it, buddy.
All right.
Thank you very much.
All right.
Take care.
All righty.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
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