Words matter ARKANSAS POSTINGS

Scores of stories live on in vocabulary

One of the joys of my career in libraries and on college campuses was the opportunity to get to know students. Daily contact with students provided a direct conduit to many aspects of our modern society that I otherwise would have missed. They taught me new words, many of which related to modern technology or popular culture. Whether they asked for it or not, I did the students the favor of broadening their vocabulary to include tried and true words and phrases from our past that are about to slip from the Arkansas and American lexicon.

I am fascinated by what time does to words. Time and change go together like biscuits and butter. Speaking of biscuits, some young people today have never experienced a real biscuit — made from scratch and lard — but, of course, the word is still very much in use.

Our words and phrases evolve over time; even aphorisms fall victim. Today one hears the old southern expression “it’s a tough row to hoe” expressed as a “tough road to hoe.” Our society is no longer rural, and that means most youngsters today grow up without any familiarity with tilling row crops. Our ancestors had a whole vocabulary of words dealing with farm animals. Think of the myriad of pieces that make up a harness used on draught animals for pulling wagons or plows. Have you ever seen a diagram of a bee hive? Every piece of that hive has a name — words stretching back generations.

The region in which we live affects speech. This was especially true of remote upland areas throughout the country, and especially in the south. But not all upland speech was the same. For example, Waymon Hogue tells us in his classic 1932 autobiography Back Yonder that Ozarkers referred to panthers or mountain lions as “painters.” Residents of the Ouachita Mountains seemed to use “panther.”

When it comes to Ozark speech traditions, I always turn to the late renowned folklorist Vance Randolph of Fayetteville, the lead author of a truly classic work of folklore, Down in the Holler: A Gallery of Ozark Folk Speech. Published in 1953 by the University of Oklahoma Press, this book is still the standard work on this topic — and it is a book full of surprises.

Based on prodigious research — Randolph wrote in the introduction “I have read everything available on the Ozark dialect” — this book takes us through everything from Ozark pronunciation to “backwoods grammar.” My favorite section, however, is the 75-page “Ozark Word List.”

The list starts with “a,” which Randolph says is often used as a contraction of “have.” A usage might be “I like to never a got here.” He also notes that Ozarkers often used “a” as a prefix. He gives the example: “She lays a-flat of her back.” I grew up in the 1950s in western Arkansas hearing and using words such as “a-going to town,” or “I was a-fixing to feed the chickens.”

Some of the words included hint at the poverty and deprivation suffered by many Ozarkers. “Barefoot bread” was a term used for cornbread made without eggs or shortening. Other words harken back to a familiarity with biblical English: the word “lamentate” meant to lament or complain. “Jake was in here a-lamentatin’ ‘bout how his barn burnt up,” Randolph wrote.

Our ancestors often created words or phrases that reflected their religious and social conservatism. For example, many southerners considered dancing inappropriate if not downright sinful. Young people, who are at their most innovative when figuring out a way around a prohibition, created a substitute called a “play-party.” While play-parties did not include instrumental music, it was in effect a dance in which the music was sung by the dancers.

Not all our ancestors were so strict, and some were contemptuous of the overly pious. Randolph defines “pokeweed religion” as “the sort of religious excitement that springs up rapidly and seems impressive, but has no permanent value.” Similar terms were “jimsonweed Baptists, cocklebur saints, toadstool churches and buckbrush parsons.” Early 20th century attorney general, governor and U.S. Senator Jeff Davis admitted to being a “pint Baptist” after being kicked out of Second Baptist Church of Little Rock for public intoxication.