Sondra, calling from Columbus, Georgia, remembered her mother saying don’t be messing and gauming with that, usually about food. The phrase means dawdling, puttering, or getting into trouble and is heard primarily in the US South. The gauming part comes from gaum, an old word for something sticky and smeary like axle grease, butter, or mud. A baby with molasses on her face is all gaumed up, and a teenager’s room can be all gaumed up too. A 1932 quotation in the Dictionary of American Regional English says a head was all gaumed up with sparking, or courting, meaning too smitten to think straight. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of ““Messing and Gauming” Means Dawdling, Puttering, or Making a Mess”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello there. My name is Sondra, voter, just like you vote on Election Day.
Well, Sondra, welcome to the show.
Hiya, Sondra.
Hi there. Good. I got both of you. How are you?
You do.
We’re great. Thank you for asking.
What can we help you with?
Well, I’m calling from Columbus, Georgia, the deep south.
Oh, yeah.
And both my parents grew up in the big city of Dothan, Alabama, which is southwest Alabama.
And in the country, and my mother and her family had this expression, which has always made me wonder where it came from.
It was, don’t be messing and golem with that.
And that usually meant food.
And I got the impression that the messing was bad, but the golem was worse.
It was just really bad.
So I just don’t know where that came from, and I have asked other Southerners from around their age group or their children, and no one else has heard that expression.
Messing and gomming usually has to do with sort of messing around, just dawdling or puttering or getting yourself into trouble.
And the gomming is really interesting.
It comes from an old word that has to do with something that’s sticky, something that you smear.
Grease or butter or mud.
In fact, it might be the grease that comes out of an axle, just that kind of mix of grime and dirt that comes out of an axle at the end of a wheel.
So if you’re gomming or you’re gomming, you might say the baby’s all gommed up.
She’s got cornbread and molasses all over her face or something like that.
We might say, most people today might say something is gummed up, which is related to that, right?
Yeah, that probably came from that.
But I hadn’t thought of it.
But it must, as you say, have something to do with getting your food dirty in conjunction.
There we go.
In general, it’s used to mean to mess around or to make something messy, both of these together.
And you do find mess and engalment together like a pear.
They’re just like peanut butter and jelly and salt and pepper.
You know, they just kind of go together.
I’m glad to know that my family’s not weird that they’re all.
No, and it’s in fine Southern tradition.
It is far more common in the South.
I mean, it’s used elsewhere in the country, but not to the same degree that it is used in the American South.
Right. Okay.
And not necessarily with food.
I mean, you might talk about your teenager’s room being all gommed up.
Right.
Well, that’s true, too.
But usually it’s spelled G-A-U-M.
We should say that, gomm.
G-A-U-M.
Oh, okay.
Well, I’m glad to know that.
It’s old enough that you’ll find it in a few standard dictionaries, although it does tend to be more of a dialect word.
One of the uses I found, which I thought was particularly appropriate, that’s a little different, is when you have somebody over, like a tradesman, to repair the sink or to fix a hole in the wall or to even just do major construction on the house.
And you might, when you realize they don’t know what they’re doing and all they’re doing is just like farting around, you’ll say, he’s messing in gum and he’s wasting my money, right?
So he’s just kind of like measuring but never cutting, so to speak.
Oh, okay.
Well, I make use the phrase more often than since I know that it is a legitimate phrase and that other people have heard of it because I didn’t want people looking at me and thinking, where did you come up with that?
Oh, it’s good to say things that people don’t understand all the time.
Not the truth.
Well, thank you so much.
I appreciate that because I am a senior citizen, and I have wondered about that my entire life, and I thought, I do want to know before I go to the heavenly beyond, hopefully.
Well, we’re glad we could help, Sandra.
Thanks, Sandra.
Thanks for calling.
Thank you.
Good talking to you.
Glad to have you along.
All right.
Bye-bye.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
You too.
Bye-bye.
I should say, never be afraid of those things that you learn from your parents and your grandparents.
Oh, gosh, no.
Just say them.
No, and explore them.
Call us about them, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
I did want to share one quotation from 1932 that I found in the Dictionary of American Regional English.
I order a note better, but my head was all gommed up with sparking.
I order a note better, but my head was all gommed up with sparking.
Sparking mean what?
With thinking?
A brainstorm?
Well, courting somebody.
Oh, sparking.
Yeah, you get all gommed up.
You know what I’m saying?
Been there, done that.
When you have a crush, you dump things straight, basically.
Exactly.
You get all gommed up.
With sparkin’.
With sparkin’.
Call us about the phrases from your family, 877-929-9673.
