Journey Proud

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Tom, calling from Burlington, Vermont.

What can we do for you?

Well, I’ve run across this phrase. I’ve only heard two people in the world that I know utter this phrase. I’ve never heard it from anybody else, and I don’t really know what it means.

Well, I know what it means in context when my mom says it, but I want to know if it’s just something in our family or if it’s something a little more common than that.

The phrase is journey proud. And should I use it in a sentence or quote my mother?

Yeah, please do.

I seldom quote my mother, but I often have her voice in my head every day. She’ll say something like, gee, I didn’t sleep very well last night before the trip because I was journey proud.

Journey proud. And what does she mean by that?

She means that she’s restless, nervous, tense, excited about a trip. And it’s usually the night before a trip. And her mother used to say it. And her mother said it too.

Yeah.

Okay. This is great. This is one of these ding, ding, ding, ding moments when somebody brings an expression to the show that I’ve read about, but I’ve never heard anybody use.

Oh, really?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ve read about this. And it’s so great. I mean, isn’t it fantastic to have a term for that feeling?

I think we’ve all felt that feeling, right?

Yeah, sure.

Yeah, that keeps you up at night, right?

Yeah, yeah. The one night that you need a lot of sleep before you get on the plane, right?

Exactly, exactly. And I don’t know about you guys, but when I’m packing my car that morning before I go on a trip or I’m headed to the airport, I don’t know. For me, life just feels different. The air seems clearer and the color seems sharper, at least on a trip that I want to go on.

The possibilities.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you just feel awake in a way that you don’t ordinarily feel awake and you feel too excited to eat. And then, of course, you get to the airport and there are all these Cinnabons and stuff.

Right, right, right. The smell of that. But yeah, I’m so excited that you brought this word to the show, Tom, because yes, you hear it mostly in the South, but you’re in Vermont, right? Is that where your mom was from?

My mom was born in Massachusetts and raised in Connecticut, and my grandfather was also born in Massachusetts and lived most of her adult life in Connecticut.

Okay.

Okay, well, you do find it in pockets of New England. And I think the key here to this expression journey proud is that proud, we usually think of it in terms of pride, but it can also be used as an adjective in certain dialects to mean pleased or delighted. And one of my favorite citations for that is one from 1895 in the Tennessee mountains. Somebody said she’ll be proud to have her tooth stop aching. So it’s pleased or glad or excited. And I just love this expression journey proud.

I only came across it a few years ago, but is there any other expression like that in English?

I haven’t heard it. Journey proud, J-O-U-R-N-E-Y P-R-O-U-D, two words, right?

Yeah.

Huh. Well, you’ve just given a gift, a verbal gift, to a lot of people who needed a term for that.

Well, that’s wonderful. I’m glad I could give a gift that was so inexpensive.

Thank you so much, John.

Thanks for calling.

Okay.

Thanks, Tom.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

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