A woman in Middlesex, Vermont, says that when she was a girl her parents sometimes described her as porky, but they weren’t referring to her appearance — they meant she was acting rebelliously. This use of the word might be related to pawky, or “impertinent,” in British English. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “She’s Porky But Not Fat”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, Granton. Hi, Martha. This is Kate Ross, and I’m from Middlesex, Vermont.
Middlesex, Vermont. Welcome to the show, Kate.
Thank you.
What’s going on?
So I have a question about the word porky.
I was always labeled porky when I was a kid because I would, basically, it was when I was standing up for my rights, essentially, when I would question my parents’ authority over me or, you know, that kind of thing.
I would get hit back with, don’t get porky with us.
I know that porky relates to, you know, somebody who’s overweight. I’ve heard that before, but that wasn’t the way it was being used with me.
It was more that I was just questioning their telling me what to do, as kids do, right?
Yeah. Are your parents American?
They both are American, yes.
Oh, interesting.
The reason I ask is that I don’t know of a meaning that really fits for P-O-R-K-Y, but I know of a word P-A-W-K-Y that tends to be used in the United Kingdom and not here that really fits this very well.
And the Oxford English Dictionary has a bunch of terms that it kind of glosses as approximate synonyms: artful, sly, shrewd, arch, roguish, jaunty, or having a sardonic sense of humor, haughty, proud, insolent, impertinent, particularly that last one.
And it would just be really interesting to me if this porky was an American variant of the British pawky, because it would fit so nicely.
And I don’t really have another meaning for porky that really fits perfectly.
Oh, that’s really interesting.
There is one entry in the Dictionary of American Regional English from New York State.
And it says, when you can see from the way that a person acts that he’s feeling important or independent, he is surely blank these days.
It was part of the survey that they did.
And they had one response that was porky.
Oh, really?
Well, the other cool thing that we can do is ask our listeners, because I’m betting that we’re going to hear from people who have also heard the word used that way.
Maybe from New York State.
Right, right. Great.
Kate, thank you so much for your call.
Thank you, too.
Take care.
Thanks, Kate. Bye-bye.
You, too. Bye-bye.
So do you know that word porky like Kate used it?
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