Swarpy

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi there.

Hi.

Who’s this?

This is George Olson from Exeter, New Hampshire.

Hi, George. Welcome to the show.

Thank you.

Well, I’ve been blessed all my life, or most of my life, to be married to a wonderful woman from eastern Kentucky.

Huh.

And over the years, she and her mother have shared a number of terms that I, being a boy from Pennsylvania, struggled with.

Things like redden up and outginning and most recently when, W-E-N, words that I had never really understood before.

But fortunately, I’ve been able to follow up on.

But there’s one that just stumps me, and that’s swarpy.

Swarpy? Swarpy.

Swarpy, yep.

Okay, what’s swarpy and how do we use it?

Sure. Swarpy describes a piece of clothing that is ill-fitting, generally too large.

In a sense that we go like, oh, mom, this coat’s swarpy.

And it’s always large.

It doesn’t seem to apply to things that are too tight.

And also I’ve asked, people aren’t swarpy.

Only clothing is swarpy.

Okay.

This is interesting.

There’s a couple of things at play here.

This is a distant use related to the more mainstream, as far as it goes, use of swarpy,

which refers to clothing that is long and free-hanging and swinging.

And it might actually even brush the ground or, like, kind of twirl out when you turn your body, that sort of thing.

And it’s related to old Scots words having to do with very similar things.

A branch might swap or wind might swap.

So S-W-A-P.

Yeah.

And you’ll find that all of these words are connected back into the darkness of English.

Swoop and swarp and swap have lots of interchangeable meanings and senses.

And in some cases, they lose their R or get their R depending on the local dialect of English that they’re speaking.

So we consider them all to be etymologically related in a very forceful way through multiple reinforcement paths.

This is really derogatory.

Is that generally the case?

It’s definitely a negative term.

Is it enough to cause a fight?

Well, no, they’re pretty peaceable people.

So, no, I notice a mother and daughter doing battle over swarpy, but it is used.

Okay.

Yeah, I guess, I mean, because that would mean that you’re not well-dressed, right?

Your clothes don’t fit you.

There’s something wrong with that, right?

Right, right, yeah.

There’s one other thing I hesitate to mention because they sound like good people besides being peaceable people,

but there is an old term which is called drinking and swarping.

It kind of goes hand in hand.

And if you were drinking and swarping, you were out drunk off your head causing a big ruckus.

Raising hell out there.

Oh.

And swarping around.

And basically, I think it refers to literally being kind of loose-limbed and all over the place and not in control of your body and not in control of your actions.

Drinking and swarping.

Drinking and swarping.

It sort of sounds like what it is.

My goodness, I should try that one day and see if I’m accused.

Yeah, you never know.

See what your wife and mother-in-law think about that.

Yes, I’ll try that.

But it does sound like your family usage is a very specific kind of distant relation to the swarping that we already know.

And so I think I can logically see that path.

Can’t you, Martha?

Sure.

Sure, yeah.

Well, wonderful.

Yeah.

George, thank you so much for calling.

All right.

Thank you, Martha.

Take care now.

Okay.

You too.

Bye-bye.

Her dress was swarping the floor is another variation on that.

Or she wore a swarpy dress.

She had to lift it up so that it wouldn’t brush against the floor.

Oh, that almost sounds like a variation on sweep, doesn’t it?

Yeah, yeah.

You can swap these words out.

Yeah, swap.

Well, we know your relatives talk funny.

Give us a call at 877-929-9673 and dish on your mother-in-law all you want to words@waywordradio.org.