When Matt was growing up in western North Carolina, he heard the word gaum, also spelled gom, meaning a mess. Someone misbehaving might be described as gauming around, or something was gaumed up, meaning messed up, or a person was dismissed as...
Jim from Bowling Green, Kentucky, says he’s heard some folks in his area use the phrase “I don’t care” when they mean to accept an offer. This affirmative use is somewhat similar to saying “Don’t mind if I...
A trucker in Glasgow, Kentucky, wonders about the term boom dog, a device used to secure things on a trailer. The boom may be inspired by a ship’s boom. The word dog has long been used in a variety of ways to refer to something that holds...
Kyarn, also spelled cyarn, is an Appalachian and Ozark dialect form of carrion, dead or rotting flesh. Jennifer, calling from the public library in Chowan County, North Carolina, heard it from her father, who grew up in eastern Kentucky, in phrases...
A Indianapolis, Indiana, woman remembers that her Kentucky-born grandfather used to say that a lazy person wasn’t very work-brickle. The dialectal term work-brickle is a variant of work-brittle, which, in the late 19th century, described...
Growing up in Kentucky, where the state religion seems to be basketball, Martha played a lot of rounds of horse, where players compete to make baskets from the same court positions, shot for shot. If you miss, you get a letter from the word horse...