Hot as Brinjer, Cold as Brinjer

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Leslie Barnette. I’m calling from Hickory, North Carolina.

Hi, Leslie. Welcome to the program. What’s on your mind?

I have a saying that I had heard from my grandmother. I was raised here in North Carolina and heard from her. She always had an expression she used when talking about something that’s hot, especially food, that she would say, that’s hot as brinjip. And as a child, I heard it as a child and as a teenager, and then she passed away in the 60s. And I always wondered where that expression came from. My mom would often tell me that she thought maybe it was a German expression because my mother had some German ancestors. And so later when I met a German teacher, I asked about that. And that person who spoke German said she didn’t know that word from the German language at all. So I’ve always wondered and wondered if you could help me find out where that expression came from.

Can you give us the word one more time and spell it?

You know, I’m not sure exactly how to spell it. I never saw it in writing. But the way she said it was hot as brinjup, like B-R-I-N-G-U-P.

Okay.

All right. This is familiar, isn’t it, Martha?

Yes. I was going to ask you if you had any Scots in your heritage besides Germany.

Yes. Yes, Scotch-Irish is also in our heritage. Yep, yep. That’s probably the source of it because hot as bringer is usually how you see it written out, when you see it written out. B-R-I-N-J-E-R, hot as bringer. And that comes from the language of Scotland, because there’s an old word, bringe, which means to rush forward recklessly and violently. And bringe can also be a kind of punch or a blow. And a bringen is a beating. And this word apparently gave us the word bringer, which refers to something that’s equally extreme. And I’m curious whether your grandmother ever used cold as bringer.

No, I never heard that.

Okay, because sometimes people will say cold as bringer, but hot as bringer, you know, it’s today’s a bringer or it’s bringing hot today. That goes back to Scotland. How about that?

That’s wonderful to find out how interesting that is.

Yeah, and so you see it often in areas of Scots and Scots-Irish settlement. So you see it in North Carolina for sure, in Georgia, South Carolina, and that area. That has been a mystery my whole life. So I really appreciate you helping me get to the source of that and to actually know that I’ve been saying it wrong or she said it wrong or we misunderstood it and to now know how it’s spelled. That means a lot.

Well, I don’t know about wrong, but it’s just a variant. So you can go ahead and save Brent, Jeff. I think I’ve got six spellings of it here on my notes. So you’re good with that one, too.

Thank you so much.

Okay, Leslie. Well, it’s great to talk with you. We appreciate your calling.

Thank you, Leslie. Take care.

Thank you.

All right. Bye-bye.

An honor to speak to you.

Bye-bye. There are linguistic heirlooms in everyone’s language stuck there like little jewels. Talk to us. We’ll explore them, 877-929-9673, or email words@waywordradio.org.