A North Carolina man moved to Grand Forks, North Dakota, and encountered puzzlement when he used the word souge to mean plunge into water or immerse abruptly. More often spelled souse, this term is more likely to be heard in the Southern U.S. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “What Does “Souge” Mean?”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hey, this is Jonah calling from Grand Forks, North Dakota.
Hi, Jonah. Welcome to the show.
Hey, Jonah.
So I’m originally from North Carolina, and my wife is from North Dakota.
So we have a little bit different words that we use in our vocabulary.
So what happened was I was in an antique store with her a while back,
And there was an old-fashioned washing machine,
And it looks like an upside-down cone on a little three- or four-foot broomstick.
And what you do is you run it up and down in a wash tub,
And it had little holes that acted as jets to wash the clothes.
And I was describing this action to her as you would just soud it up and down to get the clothes clean.
And she looked at me like I was crazy and said, that’s not a word.
So, of course, I went to Google right off the bat to try and prove myself right.
I couldn’t find anything.
I tried several different spellings and had no luck.
So I was wondering if you guys could help me out.
So I imagine a stick with a cone on the end.
You’ve got a tub full of water and clothes and laundry soap,
And you’re just like, it’s like churning butter,
Only you’re washing clothes?
Exactly.
Okay, and you’re souging it.
S-O-U-G-I-N-G?
I would do S-O-W-G-E or J-E.
Okay.
S-O-W-G-E.
Souging, okay.
Souging.
Well, you’re not crazy.
We can tell you you’re not crazy.
Not about this.
Yeah, so soug is a word that you hear in the South.
You more commonly hear the word souse,
And it means exactly what you’re talking about,
To immerse something in water, to plunge something in water or another kind of liquid abruptly.
And usually it’s sous.
Sometimes you talk about somebody being soused, meaning they drank a whole lot.
Because they’re soaked in liquid.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, yeah.
It apparently goes back to an old French word that means pickle, like the kind of brine that you put in things into pickle.
Oh, I see.
So the old French, you pickle something by soaking it in a particular liquid.
Yeah, yeah.
You dump it in that liquid.
Being soused or to be a sous means you’re soaked in alcohol, which is a kind of liquid.
And then sousing something is washing something in a lot of liquid.
You’re drenching it.
Yeah.
People refer jokingly to baptism that way.
Of sousing someone?
Yeah, you sous the convert.
All right.
So it does have to do with water.
Yeah.
Yeah, or some kind of liquid.
Yeah.
Or washing.
Because, you know, in the Navy, it’s not as widely used as some terms.
But in the Navy, they talk about sousing something, meaning to clean it.
You might be assigned soujing duties, which means you’ve got to really thoroughly, you know, do a place up so that it passes inspection.
Soujing.
Okay.
And so we’re spelling that S-O-U-G-E or S-O-U-G-E?
Yeah, I would say the verb is right.
S-O-U-G-E.
And then, but your spelling, it’s probably just fine, Jonah, because it seems to be mostly orally transmitted, which means the spelling is really loose.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So the more common one is sous, but you’re perfectly within your rights to say souj.
Yeah.
So sauj and sauj with a zh and saus.
So they’re all kind of on a spectrum of pronunciations, that last consonant.
Does it have any ties to motion?
Because I was talking to my dad, and he was saying my granddad would talk about, for example,
Working on a carburetor, and he needed you to hit the throttle, open it up fast.
He would say saus down on it.
Yeah, so I could see, you know, sort of pouring on the gas.
Yeah, I could see that.
You’re flooding it.
You’re literally soaking it in liquid, but it’s gasoline.
Okay, excellent.
How about that?
Thank you so much.
Our pleasure.
Call us again sometime, Jonah.
All right, thanks.
Take care.
All right, bye-bye.
Bye.
