who laid the rail
adv. phr.— «For all those years I have been loaded for bear with lectures of all sorts and sizes on “Who laid the Rail” to “What the Wild Western Waves are Saying.”» —“Tom Arter’s Lecture” Macon Telegraph (Georgia) May 19, 1890. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Joan from Augusta, Georgia, says her grandfather used to pronounce the word onions as if they were spelled ernions. The word onion is adapted from the French cognate oignon, and thanks to variations in dialect, geography, and other factors, this...
Penny in Savannah, Georgia, recalls that her father, a Navy veteran who served in the South Pacific, would say of someone who was clueless or didn’t know what he was talking about: That person doesn’t know if he’s punched, bored...