Janie says that when she moved to Nantucket, Massaschusetts, she’d hear oldtimers there describe something in positive terms by saying it was some good. The some here functions as an intensifier that simply means very. This expression isn’t limited to Nantucket; it’s heard in many parts of the United States. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Some Good, Where “Some” is an Intensifier”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Janie Hobson-Dupont calling from Nantucket, Massachusetts.
Hello, Janie. Welcome to the show. How can we help?
Well, thank you.
What can we do for you?
You know, Nantucket is an island 30 miles out to sea, and we moved here in 1980.
And especially back then, there were very funny little sayings that I had not heard any other place of than Nantucket.
And one of those things, and you would hear it in the morning in a restaurant called the Downy Flake, and people would be sitting around having their coffee, and the old guys would be talking, and one guy would say to another, well, that’s really some good, S-O-M-E, good.
That’s really some good, and that meant it was really good.
It’s pretty prevalent, even up until this day.
Do you have any, is that particular to Nantucket?
Or are there other places that use that phrase, some good?
Yes, as a matter of fact, there are.
That use of some as an adverb or as an intensifier, basically meaning really or very, is sprinkled throughout the United States.
There are entries in several dictionaries for it.
The Dictionary of American Regional English shows it as far afield as New England all the way to Hawaii and in Texas and sprinkled in between. It shows up in the Dictionary of Newfoundland English.
It shows up in the English Dialect Dictionary. There are citations as far back in the 1700s in Aberdeen and Yorkshire and looks like Hampshire and a few other parts of England and the United Kingdom.
So there are a bunch of different places. I have no doubt that Nantucket owns it and is very proud of it.
It’s a part of its very interesting speech pattern, though.
Okay, now, so let me ask you this. You know, the Nantucket whalers traveled literally around the world whaling, back in the whaling days.
When you mentioned Hawaii, you know, that, I wonder if, you know, because the whalers went to Hawaii, I wonder if they brought that with them.
It’s hard to know. This is one of those things that because it’s dialect speech, we can mark it down.
We can see it in old texts. We can know that those texts have a date.
We can kind of see the historical record, but it’s hard to know provenance.
Have you picked it up yourself and added it to your vocabulary?
Kind of in a joking way.
Sort of a self-conscious?
Yeah, just, you know, there are a bunch of phrases that I think Nantucketers feel they own.
In fact, I was in our Nantucket Athenaeum Library today, and one of my friendly librarians went into the vault and got me this sweetest little book.
It’s called Nantucket Scrap Basket by somebody named Macy.
And I think it was like from like the 19, 1939.
And it’s filled with like really old timey things about Nantucket.
And the back of it is just a whole collection of sayings.
Oh, I love that.
Now, some good was not in there.
There were other sayings that I’ve heard that were in the back of the book that had really interesting descriptions, but not some good.
There’s one in Louisiana, a citation recorded in Louisiana that I like.
He’s some noisy when he eats.
Just for some reason.
Here’s another one recorded in Texas.
He was some ugly.
Yeah.
He was very ugly.
So they’re all out there.
Great.
Cool.
Thank you for sharing that with us.
We really appreciate it.
Okay.
Well, thank you so much.
Take care.
Call us again sometime.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye-bye.
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