Pollyfox, Bollyfox

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Good morning, this is Gwen Chamberlain from San Diego, California.

Hi, Gwen.

Welcome to the show.

Hi.

What’s going on?

They say that my grandmother used to use a word called bolly fox. So over the years, my nine sibling and I have played around with it and tossed it back and forth. And just came up with it. It’s a style of walking, maybe. No one ever confirmed it, couldn’t find it on the Internet. I grew up in rural Mississippi during the Civil Rights Movement era, and there was a lot of segregation and stuff at that time. So I’m not sure if it’s a culturally segregated word, or my grandmother may have heard it someplace, although she was just a stay-at-home Sunday school teacher, I hear. And I don’t think she had a bunch of outside exposure, but we’re talking in what, the early 30s maybe? I was born during the 50s and grew up during the 60s in Mississippi.

Well, we talk about a sassy way of walking. She said, you had better bolly fox your behind over here. You’ve got a bolly fox on over here. And look at her bolly foxing around. So I said, what the world is bolly fox? Is it hyphenated? Is it one word? So, yeah, I’m thinking a gate, a type of walking. And how do you even spell it? Yeah, how would you spell it? This is how I would spell it. B-O-L-L-Y-F-O-X.

You know what? That is exactly how some people have spelled it the few times that it has appeared in print. It actually exists outside of your family. And hold on a second. You said nine siblings? There were ten kids in the family?

Yes.

Sainted mother.

Yeah, bless her heart. I’m sorry. Bless her heart. She was, rest her soul now, she was a young widow. My father fought in World War II and the Korean War as well.

Wow.

But she did a phenomenal job.

Well, here you are.

Apparently so.

Yes, here I am. I’ve got to say, bolly fox is more commonly given as polly fox with a P and not a B. But what’s interesting, I hear in your use of it, I hear a meaning that’s kind of like a lollygag. Does that sound about right?

Yes.

It does appear in the Dictionary of American Regional English. The dictionary definition is to equivocate, procrastinate, beat about the bush, waste time. And so it fits perfectly with the use that you have in your family.

Yeah, but we also thought because we’ve heard, and then people may have morphed its meaning. You know, my mom had about, I think about four or five sisters. I feel my aunts I had the pleasure of growing up with. They also, I think, used to say, bolly fox are using in the context of she’s really fancy type, you know, sophisticated looking. Look at her bolly foxing around. You know, that wouldn’t, to me, make it seem like, oh, she’s playing with sticks now. She’s about to get over here before I…

You know what? I don’t know. You might be onto something, Gwen. There’s one citation, and citation is when we found a word in print. There’s one citation from the Journal of American Speech in the 1930s where they’ve defined it. It’s kind of a, I think this is an amateur glossary. They define it as to move quietly or to pussyfoot. And I could see somebody that had an elegant manner or kind of walked delicately or as if their shoes were made of glass or, you know, their head high or their nose in the air. I could see describing that kind of as a way of moving quietly or pussyfooting around.

Yeah, it’s adding something to the walk, some kind of quality to it. And that citation was recorded from the Ozarks. We do have others from Mississippi, but they are more of the meaning of wasting time or fooling around.

Quit your fault, ollie fox.

Yeah, acting silly.

That is too incredible. You know, I’m looking forward to the calls that we get on this and our emails because we have a lot of listeners in the South, the American South. And I bet we’re going to get some people going, yeah. I hadn’t thought about that word in a long time.

Decades, yeah. It’s got the feel to it of one of these words that’s kind of lingering in people’s minds, and it’s going to click for them when they hear you talk about it.

Yeah, it’s delicious.

Thank you so much for calling.

No, Glenn.

Thank you both.

It’s our pleasure.

Call us again sometime.

Sure will.

Take care now.

Thanks, Glenn.

Bye-bye.

All right, bye now.

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