Words we’d forgotten

I saw it splayed across the TV screen during a Phyllis Speer Cooking on the Wild Side show: “Polk Salad.” I suppose some citified youngster that made up that graphic would also “buy a pig in a polk.” An even more correct term would be “poke sallet.”

Some other words we may have forgotten or never knew.

Grandma: Not just a name for the mother of a parent but also the lowest gear on a stick-shift vehicle as in “Put ’er in grandma, Billy Bob, iffen ye wants to git up this hill.”

Nobby: Stylish, elegant or noble. A nobby person would not defame grandma by naming a gear after her.

Hoop Snake: A mythical varmint that supposedly could form itself into a hoop and chase frightened humans by rolling downhill. No reports of it ever rolling uphill.

Hat Pin: A long sharp pin that could keep a lady’s hat from flying away, or put out the eye of a human varmint.

Hogleg: Not an appendage of a farm animal, but a large-caliber revolver. As the outlaw Josey Wales might have snarled (in the movie of the same name) to a trio of northern pursuers, “Y’all going to draw them hoglegs or just stand there and whistle Dixie?” just prior to dispatching them with his own hogleg. Might have said, that is, if the screenwriter had been familiar with the term.

Black Draught: A strong laxative tea which was, along with castor oil, used to punish defenseless children.

Source: (Mostly) W.R. Runyan’s 1,001 Words And Phrases (You Never Knew You Didn’t Know) with some liberties taken in the definitions by yours truly. JOHN McPHERSON Searcy