Being accused of getting above your raisin’, or above your raising, is a phrase mostly heard in the South to mean acting above the way you were brought up. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Getting Above Your Raisin'”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Christina. I’m calling from Oakland, California.
Hi, Christina. Welcome to the program.
Hi, what can we do for you?
I have a question about something I heard on another podcast I was listening to.
And the question is this.
A guy was answering a question about why it was difficult for straight men to dress well.
They thought straight guys want to dress better, but they’re just afraid that they can’t pull it off, that they will be accused of getting above their raisin, as they say in West Virginia.
And I never heard this before, and I took it to my friends and family who had also never heard it before.
I looked it up and found out that it was above your raising.
Is that consistent with what you guys know?
Yeah, above your raising, going beyond how you were raised as it brought up.
Right, nothing to do with dried grapes.
Right, which is how I originally heard it.
Is that right, dude?
Yeah, because the context, the way you described it, the context is a little sparse.
It’s not altogether clear that he’s dropping into this kind of regionalism and going to start using language that is not about fashion and style.
Right. And not only that, has it not made it out to the West Coast at all?
Or is it just the people that I’m associating with?
I haven’t heard this phrase.
You’re right. You’re right.
Are all your people basically from California or Oakland or around there?
Basically, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, it’s true.
What do we find?
If you look at all the different uses of it, it’s really common in the Carolinas, Tennessee, Kentucky.
Pops up a little bit in Oklahoma and Arkansas.
Very much a southern phrase and almost always with that G dropped on raising.
So it sounds like a raisin.
Ricky Skaggs popularized it in a song of his, Don’t Get Above Your Raisin.
So if you don’t get above your raisin, it means that you are not acting like you’re better than everyone else, that you are not forgetting where you came from.
You’ll find this pop up actually in a lot of songs.
Like, remember the Jennifer Lopez song, I’m Still Jenny from the Block?
Oh, yeah, right.
She’s kind of talking, telling people in the song that she is not getting above her raisin, that she is actually still acting like she’s one of the homegirls from the Bronx.
So it’s almost always desirable not to be above the raisin.
Yeah, because it means that you are rejecting your past and where you come from, and you’re rejecting your people.
Yeah, or you’re a tall poppy.
I don’t know if you’ve heard that phrase.
I haven’t heard that.
Yeah, yeah.
That’s awesome.
Yeah, your poppy blossom is up above everybody else’s.
You see that in Italian, too.
Thanks for calling, Christina.
Really appreciate it.
Thank you so much, yeah.
Our pleasure.
Take care now.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
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