Talking Southern – Southern Sayings and Their Meanings (Part I)

     Last week your compiler introduced his late Cudn Vernon Woods of Brooks, and just remembered another good story about him.  One Sunday afternoon in the fall of 1975, when your compiler was nearing his thirteenth birthday, he attended an after-church dinner with his grandparents.   Things transpired that the three Langfords walked out of the church basement at the same time Cudn Vernon and his wife, Miss Ima, were exiting.

    Your compiler’s grandfather was carrying a Tupperware container of leftover home-made banana pudding, which, just as he turned to lock the basement door, fell to the ground and splattered most copiously.  As luck would have it, Cudn Vernon was wearing a new polyester leisure suit that day with a pattern which appeared to have originated in a Barcalounger factory, and took the brunt of the spatter from his knees down. Cudn Vernon, who apparently never said anything off-color in his life, said with some exasperation, “Well, that’s just plumb ducky, Hubert!”

   “Plumb ducky” – what in the world does that mean?  “Ducky” is a rather old-fashioned synonym for, “satisfactory or fine,” while “plumb” is a rather rustic synonym for “precisely or exactly.”  Today a banana pudding splatteree might sneer, “That’s splendid, Hubert!” or something along those lines, but “plumb ducky” is ever so much more colorful.

    That got your compiler to thinking of other sayings and figures of speech he has heard around his Middle Georgia home over the years:

“Like a blind hog stumbling over an acorn” – an occasion of great luck, chance, and blessing.

“I’m going to see a man about a dog” – a nice way of saying that what I am about to do or where I’m about to go is none of your dadgum business.

“I’m fixing to go to the store”  — I am preparing to shop. (Let no one tell you that this is a misusage.  The verb “to fix” in the dictionary means to repair or to prepare. So to say, “I’m fixing to do something” means I’m about to do it, I’m doing things preparatory to it.  I am not repairing; I am preparing.   Your compiler bets even the folks who challenge your usage in this wise eat supper every night.  Somebody has got to fix that supper, and you can bet the farm they will not be repairing it.)

“Like putting perfume on a hog”  — a useless attempt to improve something too far gone to be improved.

“Somebody better pick cotton” – quit running your trap and get busy doing something productive.

“I’m’o sell you to the gypsies” — a lighthearted parental threat.

“Vaccinated with a victrola needle” – a lighthearted reference to someone who apparently cannot quit talking.

“Raise a blister on a washpot” – a remark usually made in amazement at someone’s lack of embarrassment over something, as in,  “I declare, what it’d take to embarrass that fellow would raise a blister on a washpot!”

“Full as a tick” – sated, in a culinary sense.  May refer to a blood-sucking insect or an over-stuffed mattress.

“Drunk as Cooter Brown” – legend says Cooter Brown was a fellow who lived along the Mason-Dixon Line during the Late Unpleasantness, who had family members serving on both sides of the war but who refused to declare allegiance to either, and instead chose to ride out the four-year conflict in a state of intense intoxication.

“Half-lit” – about half as drunk as Cooter Brown.

“Poor as Job’s turkey” – impoverished.  Reference is obviously to the Old Testament prophet who suddenly lost everything he held dear, yet remained faithful.

“Spitting contest” – a useless argument in which hurtful and  argumentative things are said. (The rather crass term for a full frontal expulsion of bodily fluids is often used instead of “spitting” in this context.)

“Don’t eat the seed corn” – an admonition not to live beyond one’s means.

“Too big for his britches” – aspersion for someone who has  demonstrated arrogance in his accomplishments.      

“More anon” – be sure to catch the next Talking Southern column, for Part II  of Southern sayings and their meanings.