Ozark Wordlist

Hillbilly Hot Dawgs?

Well, hit's right distink...

(Image from Wikipedia)

Okay, here's the long-promised post offering the Ozark hillbilly wordlist that has had all of you on the edge of your seats. That's "seats" as in "chairs," not "bottoms," for bottoms don't seem to have edges. Not that I'm an expert in the shape of bottoms...

But let's drop the human anatomy angle on impossibly axe-sharp asses, and move to the more humane etymology of possibly Anglo-Saxon asp-sharp sass expressed in Vance Randolph's imagined hillbilly monologue as an implicit retort to H.L. Mencken's claim that the American language has no dialects:

Lee Yancey allus was a right work-brickel feller, clever an' biddable as all git-out, but he aint got nary smidgin' o' mother-wit, an' he aint nothin' on'y a tie-whackin' sheer-crapper noways. I seed him an' his least chaps a-bustin' out middles down in ol' man Price's bottom t'other ev'nin', a-whoopin' an' a-blaggardin' an' a-spewin' ambeer all over each an' ever', whilst thet 'ar pore susy hippoed woman o' hisn was a-pickin' boogers out'n her yeller tags, an' a-scrunchin' cheenches on th' punch'on 'ith a antiganglin' noodle-hook. D'reckly Lee he come a-junin' in all narvish-like an' tetchous, an rid th' pore ol' trollop a bug-huntin' -- jes' plum bodacious hipped an' ruinated her. They never did have nothin' on'y jes' a heap o' poke sallat an' a passel o' these hyar hog-mollies, but he must a got hisse'f a bait o' vittles some'ers, 'cause come can'le-light he geared up his ol' piedy cribber an' lit a shuck fer Gotham Holler. The danged ol' durgen -- he should orter be bored fer th' simples! (Vance Randolph, "Is There an Ozark Dialect?" American Speech, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Feb., 1929), pp. 203-204)

What are we to make of this? As I admitted a couple of days ago, it goes beyond even my hillbilly ken in many of its particulars. However, Randolph has exaggerated a bit for effect by thickening the monologue with obscure expressions, making the Ozark 'dialect' appear even more distinct from standard American English than it probably was. But is it even a distinct dialect? Randolph doesn't define dialect in his article (not that I recall, but please correct me if I've misremembered), and I do wonder if Ozark hillbilly speech was different enough from the more general speech patterns of the American South to be distinctly Ozarkian. At the very least, this Ozark way of speaking would be a form of English shared with the Appalachian way of speaking.

Anyway, here's the wordlist, which I've made as complete as I could in the interest of perfect clarity. Some of these, even I couldn't find or recall, but a few readers might know. Other words will seem utterly obvious, and you might wonder why I bothered to include them, but keep in mind that I have an international readership (or like to pretend that I do):

a-blaggardin' = blaggarding: present participle, "misbehaving(?)" (cf."blackguard"?)

a-bustin' out = busting out: present participle, "hurrying"

aint = ain't: negative verbal contraction: "am not, is not, are not"

a-junin' = juning: present participle, "(?)"

allus: adverb, "always"

ambeer: noun, "Saliva colored by tobacco chewed or held in the mouth; tobacco juice"

an': conjunction, "and"

antiganglin': present participle, cf. antigoddle (antigoggle): verb, "to pursue a zigzag course" (Randolph, "A Fourth Ozark Word List," American Speech, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Feb., 1933), p. 47)

'ar: adverb, "there"

as all git-out: adverb "utterly, entirely"

a-spewin' = spewing: present participle, "spitting forcefully"

a-whoopin' = whooping: present participle, "crying out in loud whoops" (whoop = "a loud cry of exultation or excitement")

bait: noun, "plentiful amount"

biddable: adjective, "following directions or obeying commands; docile."

bodacious: adverb, "outright, unmistakably"

boogers: noun, "pests as chiggers and ticks, fleas, bedbugs, and lice" (Jeffrey K. Barnes, "Arkansas Arthropods in History and Folklore," University of Arkansas Arthropod Museum)

bored: past participle, "insulted or imposed upon" (Randolph and Patti Sankee, "Dialectical Survivals in the Ozarks: III. Archaic Vocabulary," American Speech, Vol. 5, No. 5, (Jun., 1930), 424-430)

bottom: noun, "bottom land"

can'le-light" noun, "candlelight = evening"

cheenches: noun, "bedbugs" (Jeffrey K. Barnes, "Arkansas Arthropods in History and Folklore," University of Arkansas Arthropod Museum)

clever: adjective, "generous or accommodating" (Randolph and Patti Sankee, "Dialectical Survivals in the Ozarks: III. Archaic Vocabulary," American Speech, Vol. 5, No. 5, (Jun., 1930), 424-430)

cribber: noun, "a horse that has the habit of cribbing" (i.e., "a vicious habit of a horse; crib-biting. The horse lays hold of the crib or manger with his teeth and draws air into the stomach with a grunting sound")

danged: past participle, "euphemism for damned"

d'reckly: adverb, "directly, i.e., immediately (or soon thereafter)"

durgen: adjective, "countrified or old-fashioned" (Randolph and Nancy Clemens, "A Fifth Ozark Word List," American Speech, Vol. 11, No. 4 (Dec., 1936), pp. 315)

each an' ever': pronoun, "each other"

feller: noun, "fellow"

fer: preposition, "for"

geared up: past participle, "readied, prepared"

hipped: past participle, "(?)" [UPDATE: An anonymous reader has informed me of the following: "hipped" means exasperated, "put out", discountenanced. eg: "Brother, you look hipped -- is something amiss?" I notice Patrick O'Brian's characters used this word in the 18th century diction of the Aubrey-Maturin novels set in the era of the Napoleonic wars."]

hippoed: past participle, "hypocondriacally ill" (Randolph and Patti Sankee, "Dialectical Survivals in the Ozarks: III. Archaic Vocabulary," American Speech, Vol. 5, No. 5, (Jun., 1930), 424-430)

hisn: possessive pronoun, "his" (from "his one"?)

hisse'f: reflexive pronoun, "himself"

hog-mollies: noun, "mostly North American freshwater fishes with a thick-lipped mouth for feeding by suction; related to carps"

hyar: adverb, "here"

'ith: preposition, "with"

jes': adverb, "just"

lit a shuck, fr. light a shuck: verb phrase, "to depart in haste" (Randolph, "A Third Ozark Word List," American Speech, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Oct., 1929), p. 19)

middles: adverb(?), "in the middle of(?)"

mother-wit: noun, "common sense"

nary: adverb, "not any"

narvish-like: adjective, "nervous-like"

noodle-hook: noun, "fish hook(?)"

noways: adverb, "anyway"

o': preposition, "of"

ol': adjective, "old"

orter: modal verb, "ought to"

out'n: prepositional expression, "out of"

passel: noun, "A large quantity or group"

piedy = pied(?): adjective, "patchy in color; splotched or piebald"

plum: adverb, "completely"

poke = pokeweed: noun, "a tall North American plant (Phytolacca americana) having small white flowers, blackish-red berries clustered on long drooping racemes, and a poisonous root"

pore: adjective, "poor"

punch'on = puncheon: noun, "a type of wooden floor made from split logs" (Andrew Kuntz, The Fiddler's Companion (cf. "Everybody to the Puncheon"))

right: adverb, "completely, entirely"

sallat: noun, "salad"

scrunchin': present participle, "crushing"

seed: preterite, "saw"

sheer-crapper: noun, "sharecropper"

simples: noun(?), "stupidity(?)"

smidgin': noun, "a very small amount"

some'ers: adverb, "somewhere"

susy: adjective, "hopelessly inferior, and at the same time ludicrously complacent or conceited" (Vance Randolph, "A Possible Source of Some Ozark Neologisms," American Speech, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Dec., 1928), pp. 116-117)

tags: noun, "ears(?)"

tetchous: adjective, " easily irritated or made angry; short-tempered; peevish, irritable; testy: tetchy"

thet: demonstrative adjective, "that"

th': definite article, "the"

tie-whackin': present participle, "cutting railroad ties as one's job(?)"

trollop: noun, "a restless woman, a gad- about" (Randolph and Patti Sankee, "Dialectical Survivals in the Ozarks: III. Archaic Vocabulary," American Speech, Vol. 5, No. 5, (Jun., 1930), 424-430)

vittles: noun, "victuals = food"

work-brickel: adjective, "industrious"

yeller: adjective, "yellow"

Well, there they are, as promised -- and a lot more work it was than I'd expected, so I hope that my Herculean labors were not in vain.

Test next Tuesday...

"Is There an Ozark Dialect?"

Vance Randolph

Folklorist of the Ozarks

(Image from University of Arkansas Libraries)

In the February 1929 issue of American Speech (Volume 4, Number 3, page 203-204), Vance Randolph poses a question that is -- for me -- very interesting: "Is There an Ozark Dialect?"

He asks because he has noted that H.L. Mencken, in his influential book The American Language (New York, 1921), in chapter 5 on "The General Character of American English," had claimed:

There may be slight differences in pronunciation and intonation -- a Southern softness, a Yankee drawl, a Western burr -- but in the words they use and the way they use them all Americans, even the least tutored, follow the same line. One observes, of course, a polite speech and a common speech. But the common speech is everywhere the same, and its uniform vagaries take the place of the dialectic variations of other lands. A Boston street-car conductor could go to work in Chicago or San Francisco without running the slightest risk of misunderstanding his new fares. Once he had picked up half a dozen localisms, he would be, to all linguistic intents and purposes, fully naturalized.

Randolph's choice of Mencken was not simply due to Mencken's prominence as an expert on the 'American' language. Mencken was also an outspoken critic of American boobies and leveled his satiric wit at the 'fundamentalists' populating places like the Ozarks. Randolph, although not from the Ozarks, had married into an Ozark family, fallen in love with the region, and taken it upon himself to defend the 'uniqueness' of its inhabitants.

In 1929, therefore, having spent some years crisscrossing the region, seeking out its more isolated locales, he published his article, merely two pages, asking "Is There an Ozark Dialect?" As a way of answering his own question, he composed the following monologue of what an old 'residenter' of "the more isolated parts of the Ozark highlands" might say:

Lee Yancey allus was a right work-brickel feller, clever an' biddable as all git-out, but he aint got nary smidgin' o' mother-wit, an' he aint nothin' on'y a tie-whackin' sheer-crapper noways. I seed him an' his least chaps a-bustin' out middles down in ol' man Price's bottom t'other ev'nin', a-whoopin' an' a-blaggardin' an' a-spewin' ambeer all over each an' ever', whilst thet 'ar pore susy hippoed woman o' hisn was a-pickin' boogers out'n her yeller tags, an' a-scrunchin' cheenches on th' punch'on 'ith a antiganglin' noodle-hook. D'reckly Lee he come a-junin' in all narvish-like an' tetchous, an rid th' pore ol' trollop a bug-huntin' -- jes' plum bodacious hipped an' ruinated her. They never did have nothin' on'y jes' a heap o' poke sallat an' a passel o' these hyar hog-mollies, but he must a got hisse'f a bait o' vittles some'ers, 'cause come can'le-light he geared up his ol' piedy cribber an' lit a shuck fer Gotham Holler. The danged ol' durgen -- he should orter be bored fer th' simples!

Now, I gotta admit that this 'dialect' is beyond my 'ken' in some of its details (and Randolph has exaggerated a bit for didactic purposes), but in the general tenor, I can follow it, for my Granma Hodges and 'Granpa' Archie -- the man that she married after losing my Granpa Hodges to a tree-felling accident -- both spoke something like this.

Actually, I recall a point that Randolph doesn't thematize. Both Nora Hodges Dillinger and Archie Dillinger, who came from isolated parts of Fulton County and lived together on a farm at the end of a dirt road, used the inflected form "ye" for "you" in much of their speech. For example, they might say something like:

If I'd knowed y'as a-gon' ter do thet, I'd a-tol' ye not ter do it.

Translation (if required for some):

"If I'd known you were going to do that, I'd have told you not to do it."

Granma Hodges was born in 1895, and Archie in 1899 -- if I rightly recall. My kinfolk might correct me if they happen across this post, but I'm reasonably sure that those two could have spoken this sentence.

As for the long monologue from Randolph, a little glossary might help, so I'll attempt to supply one tomorrow if I have time. I might not be able to that soon, for I'm off on a two-day retreat with the other Kyung Hee University faculty and won't return until tomorrow evening (i.e., Friday evening, August 24th, 2007, Seoul time).

Meanwhile, amuse yourselves identifying (or guessing at) word meanings...