Betsy in Murray, Kentucky, used Quit your mulligrubbing during a card game, meaning quit complaining or bellyaching. Mulligrub is an old one: by the 1500s it could mean a gloomy mood, while to have the mulligrubs could refer to a stomachache or...
What do we mean by the expression for a spell, meaning “for a period of time”? It’s mere coincidence that this term is written the same way as the word spell meaning to “arrange letters to form words” or spell as in...
Nick in Cincinnati, Ohio, is fond of his Appalachian-born grandmother’s phrase colder than blitney, meaning “extremely cold” or “cold as the dickens.” It’s likely a version of cold as blixen, which has a number of...
The splendid new Dictionary of Southern Appalachian English (Bookshop|Amazon), edited by Michael Montgomery and Jennifer Heinmiller, is a greatly expanded version of the Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English (Amazon), edited by Montgomery and Joseph...
Tabitha from Palmer, Alaska, grew up hearing her mother from southern Missouri say Stop wooling me! when a restless child was squirming on her lap. The verb wool, as in wooling someone or wooling a baby around, has been heard in parts of the South...
In Appalachia, it’s fairly common to pronounce chimney as if it were spelled chimley or chimbley is fairly common in Appalachia. This pronunciation is an artifact of immigration in areas originally settled hundreds of years ago by people from...