hoss-pinch
n.— «To those of you who do not know what a “hoss-pinch” is, it is when somebody older than your grandmother has been working for many years in the fields, has used a “rub-board” for years to wash clothes and has soft motherly hands stronger than steel—pinches your flesh with not two fingers but five as if they are making a cup for water. The thumb is used as a straight edge at the end of the cup made by the hand, so when the fingers are closed, it’s comparable to a finger being slammed in the door—but this is worse. When this happens, you would rather take any “high-number spanking” than to feel your skin, flesh, muscle and nerves caught in that trap. This is why our great-grandmother never had to spank us. She had such finesse and the ultimate control. Not the Church pinch but the “hoss pinch.”» —“It’s amazing what our ancestors did with so little” by Desmond Scaife Opelika-Auburn News (Alabama) Feb. 20, 2008. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Rose in Lebanon, Virginia recalls a phrase passed down from her great-grandmother: The night before the first day of school, parents would come into the children’s bedroom and say in a singsong voice: School butter, school butter. This...
Diana from Tucson, Arizona, reports that when she was young, her Irish grandmother would chase her and her misbehaving siblings around the house yelling, “You omadhauns!” Also spelled amadán, this word of Celtic origin means...