Mark from Newport News, Virginia, says his mother, who grew up in Fancy Farm, Kentucky, often used a puzzling phrase. To ask how close he was to completing a task, she’d say what sounded like How much do you like? In parts of the Southern United States lack is pronounced to sound as like does in much of the rest of the country. This is part of a complete episode.
Leave a comment
1 comment
More from this show
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...
If someone’s got melon, it means they’re smart. The expression most likely arose because of the resemblance between a melon and a human head. Several other foods are associated with having brains, including a cabbage, a gourd, and even a...
Re. “How Much Do You Like?” (where “like” means “lack”), This is a usage that was common among my Texas grandparents (born in Texas in the 1910s). Their parents were places like Alabama, Missouri and Tennessee. One usage I recall hearing them say is using “Iiked to” to mean “almost”. I’d hear them tell stories like “I was so embarrassed about that, but they liked to never let me forget about it”. I think the “like to never” meant it FINALLY happened, but it was very difficult to do.