Growing up in Thibodaux, Louisiana, Ashlie was accustomed to using many Cajun terms, such as sha bébé, a version of cher bébé meaning “poor baby,” ya mom ‘n’ ’em for “your family and circle of friends,” and lagniappe, meaning “a little something extra thrown in.” Another one is pelay, pronounced PEE-lay, which she uses to describe an action like stubbing her toe or bumping her knee. It’s from piler, which according to the Dictionary of Louisiana French has a variety of meanings, including “to trample or crush,” “to beat,” or “to step on someone’s foot.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Pelay, Piler in Lousiana French”
Hi there, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, my name is Ashley Daigle and I’m calling in from Hoffman Estates, Illinois. It’s one of the northwest suburbs of Chicago.
Okay, well welcome to the show. What can we do for you, Ashley?
Well, my accent and geography may belie my origins. I’m originally born and raised in a place called Thibodeau, Louisiana.
Oh yeah.
So there are lots of Cajun words that we use down south in Louisiana. Some I’ve used my whole life that I kind of already knew they were Cajun. So my family doesn’t really speak French, but these things kind of get peppered in.
So, you know, I’m used to saying chababay, so poor baby, if somebody’s not feeling well. Or we say, how’s your mom and them? To ask, how is your family? How are your mother and them? Or lanyap, which means a little bit something extra that’s good. We use that around here. We learned that from one of our, well, we picked it up from one of our listeners years ago. And so in the house, in the radio, our little radio team, we use lanyap.
Yeah, we sure do. That is excellent. I do what I can to spread it around, so I’m glad to hear it’s other places. That’s exciting.
So I knew that those words, you know, were Cajun, but only a couple years ago I was walking around my house and I bumped my knee into something. And I said, I P-laid my knee. And my husband, who’s from Illinois, said, what? And I didn’t know that pelade, you know, isn’t just a real word, I guess, or a common word. And so I’m presuming it’s something, you know, Cajun. And so I asked my dad, like, hey, what does pelade mean? And where is it from? And he’s like, well, it means you bump into something. I was like, right, but like, why? And I couldn’t figure out a spelling. I don’t speak French, so I couldn’t find anything trying to do some research on my own. So I’m interested in that word specifically, you know, what’s it about?
First of all, I love this, and you’re fantastic. I love everything that you’re teaching us right now. This is one of the things we enjoy about this show because you’re teaching us stuff outside of our experience. The other thing is I speak a little bit of French, but not this French. And so I love adding on the different dialects of French to what I already know about mainstream kind of French Frenchy French from Europe. So, cool.
Pile in French means to grind, P-I-L-E-R. And so you might grind, say, garlic or you might grind nuts or something like that. And so you kind of ground your toe against a piece of furniture, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But I want to refer you to a dictionary which you are going to love and you can give as a gift to your spouse and he will understand you better. And it is called the Dictionary of Louisiana French. It’s edited by folks with the last name of Waldman, V-A-L-D-M-A-N and Rottet, R-O-T-T-E-T. But anyway, look up Dictionary of Louisiana French. And it has a whole big entry on this verb and all the different ways that in the different parishes of Louisiana, this verb is used in French, including meaning to step on someone’s foot or to crush pecans or to trample down the mud in a parking lot or to beat someone up. So all these different varieties, all of these kind of connected to grind or to pound, right? But not quite or to beat or to beat up.
So anyway, it literally has one here, Piller sur le pied de quelqu’un, to step on someone’s foot, which I think is very close to what you’re talking about.
Oh, it’s real. That’s so exciting.
Yeah, right? And they indexed them according to the parish that they picked them up in, where they found them when they were doing their field work.
Oh, that’s exciting.
Yeah, that’s really great.
Yeah, right? And that resource.
Yeah, so I think you’re going to love this book. I think it’s going to have a ton of answers to you. It’s going to make you have a perfect marriage.
Oh, wonderful. And that’s such a super cool word. I mean, it almost substitutes for a curse word.
Right. You know?
Oh, I peed laid my name.
Well, I like how easily that could be borrowed into English without even a second thought.
Well, yeah. I mean, I’ve used it my whole life, and it didn’t even occur to me that it was something outside of, you know, normal, everyday English.
Yeah. Like, voila is kind of on the edge of being borrowed into English without thinking about it. Can see in all the spellings where people don’t know that it’s French and they spell it English ways. But it still has a foreignness about it, but Pile, that doesn’t really have a lot of foreignness about it.
Definitely, definitely. Well, cool. Ashley, you know, I’ve got to tell you, I have instructions for you, which is to call us again with this stuff, because I want more of it from an insider, and you are that.
Absolutely. Will do. All right, and let us know if this improves your marriage, Jenny.
All right, definitely. Thank you so much.
Take care. Bye, Ashley. Bye-bye.
All right, bye-bye. Have you moved across the country and used a word and people looked at you like you had two heads, call us about that or any other aspect of language. 877-929-9673 or send that whole story to us in email. That address is
