Larruping Is a Striking and Whopping Good Word

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Kate. I’m calling from Greenville, South Carolina.

Hi, Kate. Welcome to the show.

Hi, thanks so much.

What can we do for you?

My grandfather, I have this childhood memory of sitting at a table with him in Murray, Kentucky.

And he was eating one of his favorite snacks, and he used the word larriphin, as in this is so larriphin.

Which I’m assuming is a synonym for delicious.

And I never saw the word again.

I thought maybe it was something he made up,

Or I didn’t know where this word came from.

I will say a few years ago, maybe five, six years ago,

I was reading a Barbara Kingsolver novel, Feather Crowns.

And in that book, one of the characters uses larapin,

And I got so excited to see the word again.

And also to be introduced to the spelling of it.

And I don’t know.

I’ve never seen it.

I don’t know anything.

I haven’t seen it again.

I don’t know anything about it and wondered if you could shed some light on it.

I love that it was a Barbara Kingsolver novel that brought it back to you because she’s such a great writer and she does have that feel for language.

Yeah, and that you got to see it in print and see one of the many, many spellings.

Yeah, there’s so many.

Yeah, I was so excited to see it.

Yeah, anyways, go ahead.

Sorry.

No, you nailed the one meaning of it, which is delicious.

It’s so often used with food, Martha, but it didn’t start that way.

No, larip, the word larip itself is an old verb that means to beat or thrash.

And the term laripin, meaning something that’s really good, especially food, is sort of like an intensifying word, like whopping or striking or thumping.

It’s that same idea, you know, something that really beats everything else.

But, yeah, Larapin has been around for a while.

One of my favorite uses of it that you’ll see in print was from Woody Guthrie’s autobiography back in 1943.

He said, anything you like real good and ain’t got for a long time and then you get it, that’s Larapin.

Oh, isn’t that terrific?

That’s exactly right.

Yeah, my grandfather was eating this snack, you know, and he at this point was in his 70s, 80s. And it was a cold glass of milk with white bread torn up in it and smashed down and stirred in.

And as best as I knew, this was a snack that he had been given during the Depression when he was growing up.

And he just thought it was the most, he said larapin.

And doesn’t that, I just, and I love to know the verb of it, but doesn’t that beat all?

Wonderful.

And there’s that verb again, beat, to mean strike or hit.

And we have so many of these, Martha, that took on a meaning of emphasis.

Like we talk about a smashing success, smash.

Yeah, and so I don’t know what spelling Barbara Kingsolver used, but Woody Guthrie spelled it L-A-R-E-P-I-N with an apostrophe.

The version I usually see in the United States is L-A-R-R-U-P-I-N-G, larapin, either with or without the G.

But I love that you were reunited with that word and with that wonderful memory.

So, Kate, thank you so much for sharing the memories and for sharing your thoughts with us.

Thank you so much.

Call us again sometime, all right?

Sure.

Okay.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

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