Mommicked

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, my name is Rebecca Easter. Hi, Rebecca. Welcome to the show.

I was calling about a term that I’ve heard used since my childhood. I grew up in Carteret County, North Carolina. We’re on the coast. And in the eastern part of the county, we call it down east. Part of it is along the barrier islands and near the Cape Lookout seashore. But there’s a series of communities down there, and they have a specific, it’s almost like a brogue that they use. But there’s a lot of terms that they use, and one of them is momicked. I think it’s spelled M-O-M-M-I-C-K-E-D. And usually I’ve heard it used to mean flustered, or if someone’s had a really rough day, if they’re bothered or frustrated, they’ll say that they’ve been momicked that day. And it’s just a, that’s one of the many terms. There’s also an area called Psalter Path, where there’s another pocket of folks that use similar terms with a similar accent. They also, they, just many of the things they say are beautiful to me. It’s almost poetic. Like if they’re, if they want to indicate that they think something’s funny, that they would be laughing a lot, they’ll say, I’m bent double, like bent over double laughing.

They also use words like, or terms such as in the Merkles, which is, there’s a lot of Merkle bushes around here. So if you take a turn off the path, you’ll end up in the Merkle bushes or lost. So those two things, like bent double and in the Merkles, I can understand kind of, I could see maybe where they came from. But MAMIC, I have no idea and I’ve always been curious.

That’s really interesting.

Yeah, what’s super cool about momok is it’s a really old word. Yeah, it goes back to England and like the late 1500s, early 1600s. In fact, Shakespeare used the term momok, M-A-M-M-O-C-K.

Wow.

Yeah, you find that in one of his plays. And it means to tear. Later, it means to fluster. The noun momok, M-A-M-M-O-C-K, means an untidy heap or mess, a litter, a confused, shapeless mass, a dirty mixture, a confusion, a muddle. And it’s really interesting that although you see it in the South, you especially see it in that part of the country where you are. Maybe every time someone asked us about this question, there’s somebody from North Carolina.

Yeah.

I mean, it’s really, I know that I lived in, I’ve lived in Nashville, Tennessee. I lived for a while in Pennsylvania, south central Pennsylvania. Never. And I would occasionally, you know, you revert back to your childhood. I’ve had a bad day. And I would say, oh, I’ve been momicked today. And people would look at me like I was crazy. No one had ever heard of it that wasn’t from here.

I like your approach to this new language, though, or this language that belongs to the area. You talked about it as beautiful. And I think that’s a great attitude to take to this kind of speech that is not mainstream or standard.

Oh, yeah. To me, it’s poetic. You know, I can say I’m laughing or I can say, oh, that’s funny. But when I say I’m bent double, you know, that paints a really beautiful picture very quickly. It’s pretty concise, but it just adds a, there’s another dimension, I think, to communication down here because of that.

Absolutely. And that’s what we keep saying again and again on the show. Be proud of your dialect. And I love the delight that you’re taking in it. Thank you so much for calling. And if anything else from down east strikes your fancy and you want to share it, please give us a call, all right?

Will do.

Thank you so much.

All right. Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.