Oosh! It’s Cold!

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Bob Golis. I’m calling from Mount Airy, North Carolina.

Hey, Bob.

Hi, Bob. What’s up?

Hi. A few years back, I moved from, I lived in Kansas for most of my adult life after I got out of the Navy.

And I moved to East Tennessee.

So just the other side of the Blue Ridge or the Smokies from where I’m living now.

And I had a very nice neighbor.

And we had one of our rare snowstorms over there.

I stepped out. We were going to help shovel each other’s walk.

And I walked up to him and he looked at me and he goes, oosh.

And I said, what? And he says, well, it’s cold, oosh.

And I said, where I grew up, we said, brr.

And so he explained to me that that’s the way they say that there.

So I just wondered if you all had encountered this.

Is it regional there to Appalachia?

I mean, we were just right at the foothills of the Smokies.

Well, it is particularly common in Appalachia, and I do have some evidence that it’s heard in western North Carolina and in northern Alabama.

Over the years, we’ve heard from listeners about it.

Tiffany wrote to say she grew up using it in Arkansas.

However, Johanna, who grew up saying it in Alabama, as did her mother and others there, said her husband from Arkansas had never heard it.

So I don’t know.

Most people that we’ve heard from and that I’ve been able to find either are from North Carolina, Appalachia, or northern Alabama.

There’s a biography by a woman named Cleo Hicks Williams called Gratitude for Shoes, Growing Up Poor in the Smokies.

And she includes Oosh and Ooshie.

And she was from Cherokee County, North Carolina.

And there’s a blog, a wonderful blog, called Blind Pig and the Acorn by Timber Presley.

And it’s all about Appalachian culture.

And she’s got a great entry that includes mention of oosh and ooshie.

And she and her commenters all talk about whether or not they use it.

And a number of people know it.

And they’re from different parts of Appalachia.

And one person says they use ooshie-bushie to mean very, very cold.

So it is out there.

None of the major books that I have, none of the big dialect dictionaries include it.

But there’s enough evidence out there that we can draw a little bit of a dialect map and say that it does exist and kind of pin it to a geographic region.

So it is a thing.

So it’s more of a verbal word that you’ll encounter, but there’s not really much in print or documented.

No, no.

I found it very few printed sources at all.

Well, Bob, what I want to know is, does Oosh work better than Burr?

Because when I’m really cold, making a noise like that helps me feel like I’m a little bit warmer.

Does one of them work better than the other for you?

You know what?

I have actually used Oosh because, you know, after you get exposed to it, it kind of works better than Burr.

But, you know, Burr to me almost sounds like you’re mimicking your teeth shattering or, you know, the shivering.

But oosh is just like you just blow it out and let everybody know how you’re feeling.

But you know what we’ll do, Bob?

We’ll put the word out to our listeners who are all over.

And if other folks have used oosh or ooshi or something like that to mean cold,

It’s kind of an interjection that you make when it’s cold out.

They’ll let us know.

They’re pretty good about that.

Maybe we can draw a bigger map or a more precise one.

Well, I’ve really enjoyed our conversation.

I appreciate you listening to my commentary there.

Yeah, we appreciate it.

Thank you for sharing.

All right.

Have a wonderful afternoon.

Thank you.

You too.

Take care.

Be well.

Bye, Bob.

Thank you.

Yeah, if you know something about oosh or ooshie to mean cold,

If it’s an expression to just blurt out anytime you’re shivering,

Let us know, 877-929-9673,

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