Is it any Count?

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, this is Jason Dickey in Tallahassee, Florida.

Hi, Jason. How you doing?

Hey, I’m well. How about y’all?

I’m groovy.

So, I’m calling from Tallahassee, Florida. That’s where I live now.

But I’m from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which is in the eastern part of the state.

Yeah.

So the culture is, it’s Appalachian.

-huh.

And I’ve grown up probably saying a lot of weird things.

But there’s one in particular that, if I’m in Tennessee, it’s not weird.

But anywhere else, it pauses the conversation and immediately spawns, you know, discussion of what the crazy thing that I just said.

And it’s one thing to tell people, oh, yeah, I grew up saying that.

But to, you know, come up with the derivation, I’ve got nothing.

I’ve even looked on the Internet search.

I’ve got – you guys are my last hope.

Well, give it a try.

So the expression, and I’ll need to say it slow, I think, it’s – if I want to ask somebody if something is any good,

If it’s worthwhile, then I ask, is it any count? Like you would count one, two, three.

And it’s usually about, a lot of times it’s about food or a restaurant. You know, a really good

Recent example was we were in Reno visiting my brother-in-law, and I’m really into micro-brewed

Beer, and we’re passing a micro-brewery, and he says, hey, Jason, here’s one over here that

We could go to. I forgot to mention it. And I said, oh, yeah, does it any count? And, you know,

Everybody started laughing.

They didn’t know what I said.

I never found out if the beer was any good.

That’s the typical situation where once I say it, I almost cringe.

It’s like, oh, here we go.

Because you have to explain yourself.

Yeah.

They’re not paying attention to what you were really saying.

Yeah, it’s like pressing the pause button in the conversation, right?

That’s it, yep.

So what do you think?

It has to do with counting or totaling up.

What’s it worth?

Is it any count?

Does it add up to something worth something?

Sometimes a variant of that is, is it any account?

But, yeah, you do hear it all over the South very strongly,

And it sort of makes me think of, who is it in the cartoons, Yosemite Sam?

You know, you dog-blasted, ornery, no count, nothing, lily livered.

Are you comparing me to Yosemite Sam?

He was a great gunfighter in his day.

Do you have a mustache?

But Martha, I thought, is it any account was the older original form?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And account is…

Because when you talk about something, he came to no account or it came to no account, meaning there was no good result, right?

Yeah.

And so it’s related to other uses of summing up, right?

Just kind of recounting what happened, another form of the word there, recounting what happened and deciding whether or not it was worth the trouble or you had a profit or so on, right?

Right.

Summing it up, the total.

Exactly.

And you are absolutely right, Jason.

Not a lot has been written about this.

Not at all.

I don’t know of any dictionary, even like the Dictionary of Smoking Mountain English.

Does he have an entry for that?

Yeah, yeah, he does.

He absolutely does.

And I sure heard it in East Tennessee and Western North Carolina growing up when I spent summers there.

Absolutely.

And if you Google around a little bit for this, particularly pay attention to Google Books,

You’ll find uses of this that are more than 100 years old from Tennessee and Georgia and Mississippi and Florida.

And it’s strongly Southern.

It is so strongly Southern.

It’s almost like there was a wall put up around this phrase.

You know, if you were to map it, it was like you put one leg on one side and one leg on the other,

And one leg would be Southern and the other one would be Northern.

Because this is not a phrase you are likely to hear outside of, like, the Southernest most South that could ever be South.

Yeah.

Yeah, so you’re right.

I mean, it’s your heritage.

I would be proud of it.

I love it.

It’s a good saying.

I would encourage others to use it.

Yeah.

Jason, be true.

That’s it. Just be true to yourself and you’ll be fine.

Be real.

Be real.

Thanks for calling. I hope we helped a little bit.

If we come across anything really concrete on this, we’ll be sure to pass it along, all right?

Yeah, that was interesting. I really appreciate it.

All right. It’s our pleasure.

All right. Thanks, Jason.

See you.

Take care. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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