grabble
v.— «Judge Bryant took exception to my notion that you’d have to be an idiot to noodle, considering what you might put your hands on—besides a catfish—underneath slimy rocks and logs in a river or lake. First of all, Judge Bryant, who grew up in the Goldmine community, said folks called it “grablin,’” not “noodling.” “We’d go down to the Savannah River on a Friday and grabble. The women and kids would join us on Saturday afternoon, and we’d have a big fish fry.”» —“Jolly green johnny” Independent-Mail (Anderson, S.C.) July 17, 2005. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Penny in Savannah, Georgia, recalls that her father, a Navy veteran who served in the South Pacific, would say of someone who was clueless or didn’t know what he was talking about: That person doesn’t know if he’s punched, bored...
Amid court-ordered busing in the 1970s, a middle-school teacher tried to distract her nervous students on the first day of class with this strange assignment: find a monarch caterpillar. The result? A memorable lesson in the miracle of metamorphosis...