Sunday week

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Grant. This is Melissa from Jacksonville.

Hey, Melissa. Welcome to the program.

Hey, Martha. How are you guys doing?

Doing well. What’s going on in Jacksonville?

Yeah, how’s it?

Well, I have a grandfather, and he is an amazing man. He’s 87 years old from the backcountry woods in North Carolina, and he has some of the most interesting sayings. For example, he calls paper bags pokes. He calls Coca-Cola dope. And then he also, when you ask when someone’s coming into town, he always says Sunday week, and I have no idea what that means. And so I have to ask him, this Sunday? He says no. I said next Sunday? No. The following Sunday. So where does this saying come from?

He’s still around. He’s still with us, right?

Yep. He is kicking. He’s called himself a sexy senior citizen, and he’s hanging around to see what old folks do.

Awesome. Where in North Carolina is this fella?

Well, he’s here in Jacksonville now. He started out in O’Shelby, North Carolina, and then went from there. He was a moonshine runner, and at the age of 15, they said, you’re either going to jail or the Navy. So he chose the Navy, and that’s how he wound up here in Jacksonville.

Oh, I see. Oh, that’s great. The Navy made a good man of him, huh?

It did, absolutely. That’s great. We may have some relatives or friends in common, because I came from some moonshiners as well. I have moonshiners in my family, too, and recent ones. Last week. But let’s not talk about that. Taxman’s coming.

So he says poke, which means bag or sack.

Yeah, like pig and a poke.

Like pig and a poke. He says dope to mean a Coca-Cola.

My daddy said that. That’s old-fashioned stuff. Dope is one of those words that has something like 80 different chemicals that it can be. Like a dope is something you put on a canvas airplane in order to seal the wings. Dope is something you can put on gears to make them go smooth.

Yeah, but they used to put coca in the coke.

Yeah, yeah. Dope is something, junk that you can put in your veins.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, my God. That’s so funny. But you were calling about Sunday week, and that’s incredible.

Yes, Sunday week. Let me ask you, do you have Scott’s Irish roots? I mean, does your family? I bet. I mean, is it a Mac or somewhere in your name or in your family’s names or anything like that?

Let me think. And then half of it is Cherokee, and the other half, I want to say, is Scotch. They’re Patterson. I’m betting yes, that part of the country, Scotch-Irish.

Here’s why I asked. The man in the United States who is an expert in the Scots and the Irish influence on American English is named Michael Montgomery. Great fellow. He did the Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English. But he’s also done a book called From Ulster to America. And in this book, he has an entry for this term. So you’re talking to somebody. Aunt Birdie’s going to come to town, and they tell you she’s coming Sunday week or Monday week or Thursday week. And what they mean is a week from the coming day that they mention. So Sunday week doesn’t mean this Sunday. It means the Sunday after this Sunday. Got it. Thursday week doesn’t mean the coming Thursday. It means the Thursday after this Thursday. And you can do it in the past tense, too. I’ve seen this in old newspapers, which is a little hint of what I’m about to say. So somebody will say, yeah, they came down, we sat on the porch and had some iced tea. This was Tuesday last. Or you might say it was Tuesday a week. Tuesday last means last Tuesday, and Tuesday a week means a week Tuesday. And I’ve seen this yesterday week.

Yeah. A week counting backward from yesterday. It’s great stuff. It’s crazy. It’s so confusing to me still. It’s still far more common in the dialects of the United Kingdom. It’s growing a little old-fashioned there. In the United States, it’s never been that common. Where it has appeared it was among the people with Irish roots or Scots roots or Scots-Irish roots, so kind of three different things there. And these days, your grandfather is one of the dying breed of people who uses this. It’s going to be among older white folks in the South. So that’s what the senior citizens are going to be doing.

Oh, gosh. I think I’ll just stick to asking him exactly the date.

I think that’s a great plan. But he probably does it just to befuddle you anyway, right?

I think he does. He’s that type of guy to do that, yes.

Oh, is he really?

Oh, yeah. It’s got a nice lilt to it. Sunday week. I can’t wait until I’m old. Then I can just do all that kind of nonsense without having to worry about the consequences.

I know. I think it would be fun to be old, yeah.

Oh, let’s just start now. Melissa, thanks so much for entertaining us today.

Thank you so much, guys. I really appreciate it.

All right. Bye-bye.

Tell your grandpa hi.

Take care.

I will. Bye.

That’s what we call a linguistic heirloom. It’s the thing that your grandparents or your parents say that they pass on to you. And somewhere along the way, you kind of lost track of what it meant or where it came from. We’re the people who help you figure that out. It’s like Antiques Roadshow on the radio, but it’s about language. 877-929-9673. Words@waywordradio.org. We’re all over Facebook and Twitter.