Talking Southern – To Your Health (Part 2)

“Tolerable” is a grand old word, applicable in many situations. When used to describe one’s health in much of the South, though, its middle syllable is dropped and “tol’able” is the result.  (Many of us, in speaking do the same thing with several other words – “prob’ly” and “li-bry” come to mind right off the cuff, for, of course, “probably” and “library.”)

When it comes to health, “tol’able” is a versatile term.  Usually it means something on the order of  “acceptable but not terrific,” “getting by, thank you, “I’ve been better,” etc.  In this meaning, one who is tol’able is less well than someone who is “fair to middlin’” or even just plain old “middlin’.”  

But here is the rub: “tol’able” is a term of tremendous nuance. It can be used, and is by some, to cover all the territory between “so fine I can’t stand it” and “so sick I want to die.”  Thus, one who says he is “tol’able” may actually be healthier than one who is fair to middlin’ or just plain middlin’.  

In short, “tol’able” can mean anything from “pretty darn good” to “pretty darn bad” when it comes to describing health, so one must often rely on non-verbal aspects of communication when interpreting its meaning – such as body language, inflection, personality, and tendency to under- or overstate things, etc. – to determine how someone who says he’s “tol’able” really is.  So please be careful to do so.  You’ll get the hang of it eventually.

And if you don’t get the hang of it eventually, well…your compiler hates to be rude, but Delta is ready when you are, unless you are just too “po’ly” to make the effort, in which case we’ll give you a pass.

“Po’ly” is the last quasi-medical term we shall discuss in this two-part series. It is a contraction, of course, of “poorly,” which term should require no elucidation.  One who feels poorly – or “po’ly,” as we tend to say it, either through natural accent or exaggerated dialect – feels rotten, terrible, God-awful, or almost dead.  It is mighty hard to feel worse than “po’ly.”

One might feel “po’ly” because of disease, virus, food-poisoning, or any number of things. Arthritic people (or others who have engaged in more physical exertion than they normally partake of) may be so “stove-up”  that they feel “po’ly.”    Your compiler knows not the derivation of the term “stove-up,” but it sounds altogether Southern to him.

Following is a sentence that uses both terms:  “Luther’s been feeling right po’ly since he sawed up that tree Sar’dy* — he’s all stove-up from using his chainsaw and can hardly get up out of his Barcalounger.”

So if this story has a moral, it is to try to avoid first-hand knowledge of the terms “stove-up” and “po’ly,” to make your “tol’ables” the good kind, and to try to keep the scale at “fair to middlin’” or better all the time.