When People Geehaw, or Don’t

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Lisa, and I’m calling from Greenville, South Carolina.

And I was wondering about a word that I have heard in the South used.

It’s jihaw.

And I did some digging into it a little bit, and on an urban dictionary, I found that it usually refers to something that is broken.

But the use I’ve always heard it with is like two people not getting along.

Like, don’t sit Sarah and Beth together at the dinner party because they don’t jee-haw.

And I was just wondering what the origin of that word was, if you knew.

Jee-haw.

How would you spell it?

J-E-E-H-A-W.

Jee-haw.

Like yee-haw, but with a J.

Yep.

That’s one of them.

Sometimes people spell it with a G.

Actually, more often with the G.

G-E-E-H-A-W.

And it’s two words.

Because it started as two words.

You know, when you’re driving your mule team, as one does, Lisa, and you’re driving the crops to market, as one does, and you’re directing the animals and you might shout G and haw, that’s what this is referring to.

Oh.

Yeah, or horses or sled dogs even, which maybe is more common, you know, in the kind of folklore of the United States today.

So G means a right turn and haw means a left.

So you say G and to get the animals moved to the right and ha to get the animals moved to the left.

So if people don’t G-ha, that means they don’t follow the directions and work as a team together.

They don’t work in the traces together, which is actually another expression we have.

We have variations on, how does it go, Martha?

Something about.

Like kick against the, don’t kick against the traces?

Yeah.

There’s that expression about people kicking against the traces, which means they don’t take direction well.

Or people not working as a team together generally is what we’re talking about.

And this goes back well into the early 1900s in a variety of forms.

Definitely in a rural context, obviously, because there’s this farming connotations here.

I like the idea of using that kind of word when you’re talking about a fancy dinner party.

People all dressed up and dripping with diamonds, but boy, they don’t g-haul.

I’m imagining like a state dinner with all the world’s leaders.

Well, thank you so much because they would use that word often when they were talking about people who didn’t get along, and I had never heard that before.

I hope that helps, Lisa.

All right. Thank you.

Take care now. Bye-bye.

Thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

Well, if your language isn’t Jihan without your spouse or your family, we can help you sort it out.

Give Martha and me a call, 877-929-9673, or you can text that same number toll-free in the United States and Canada.