Language: Dialect and Idioms
The speech patterns of a region help define the culture. In the Ozarks, as is true elsewhere in the United States, mass communications have regularized many of the distinctive idioms of the area. Still, an alert ear will hear vestiges of the English, Irish, and Scottish heritage in the speech of Ozarkian natives, along with a distinctive Ozarkian brogue all its own. Vocabulary, dialect, and idiomatic expressions provide a glimpse of the region's heritage.
Of course, no discussion of Ozarkian speech would be complete without mentioning the work of Vance Randolph. His studies of folklore, speech patterns, and superstitions have long delighted those readers with an ear for the vernacular. The following common Ozark saws are probably recorded somewhere in his Down in the Holler or Ozarks' Superstitions.
Vocabulary:
Antigoggling--crooked; mixed up
Do things up in brown rags--do things nicely or fancily
Gussied Up--dressed up; adorned
Hornswaggle--cheat or mislead
Jump the broomstick--get married
Lollygagging--wasting time; meandering
Oncommon--uncommon
Passel--a lot; a large sum or group
Slaunchways--diagonally; at a slant
Work brittle--accustomed to hard work
Whipstitch--a short time; soon
Split the blanket--get divorced
Dialect:
Some of the regional dialect is governed by rules retained from Elizabethan English (and medieval English). For instance, notice the pronunciation of these general terms:
/agin/--against
/fig' ger/--figure
/fur' in ers/--foreigners
/keer/--care
/nar'e/--narrow
/pert neer/--pretty near
/rench/--rinse
/sum' ers/--somewheres
/thrashin'/--threshing
/warsh/--wash
/whur/--where
There are also some general rules that govern pronunciation of types of words:
Add a before verbs; omit the final g on present progressive verbs:
a-rainin', a-wishin', atalkin', a-noticin', a-hopin'
Omit other initial vowel sounds, whether the word is a verb or not:
/magine/ imagine; /portant/important; /lowed/allowed; /tend/attend
Change ending "ow" to "er":
holler/hollow; beller/bellow; yeller/yellow; winder/window; waller/wallow
Words ending in /a/ are frequently pronounced /e/:
/alfalfe/ alfalfa; /ide/ idea; /sode/ soda
Retain irregular verb forms and the "t" in place of "ed" as an inflectional ending:
/retch/ reached; /burnt/ burned; /learnt/ learned; /spelt/ spelled
Idioms and Figures (figgers) of Speech:
Some of the most captivating speech pulls from vivid similes and metaphors, most frequently drawn from nature.
Consider some of these comparisons which offer a less than complimentary assessment of another's appearance and character:
His head's as empty as hornet's nest in winter.
You ain't fittin to waller with the hogs.
What's time to a hog? (a person who is late)
You are as ugly as a mud fence after a rain.
He is so ugly he has to sneak up on a glass of water to get a drink.
I'll dance at your wedding in a pig trough.
He would talk your leg off and then curse you for being cripple.
He is as low as a snake's belly in a wagon rut.
She is so crooked she couldn't sleep in a round house.
You don't have sense enough to pound sand in a rathole.
He is so big you couldn't throw a fly line around him.
Her tongue wags at both ends.
He should put a hat on before the sun cooks the sour water in his head.
She is as worthless as tits on a boar.
She is not worth a milk bucket under a bull.
Her eyes stuck out so far you could have knocked them off without touching her head.
You have no more a chance than a grasshopper in a hen house.
If he didn't have so much turned under, he would be a lot taller on top.
She is as skinny as a plucked chicken.
You walk like you had a cob between your legs.
He is too lazy to say sooey if the hogs was eatin' him up.
Other amusing comparisons offer descriptive understanding of situations and the environment:
This house is so cluttered you could lose a threshing machine in a drawer.
It is colder than a witch's breast in a brass bra on a freezing day in January.
It is colder than a well digger's hind end.
It is colder than the center of a cucumber.
He makes me as nervous as a porcupine in a balloon factory.
He is so poor he couldn't buy hay for a nightmare.
This country is so rough if you got sick and the weather turned bad, they'd just have to let you die and haul you out when it faired up.
That hen is so tough you couldn't stick a fork in her gravy.
You couldn't beat that deal with a switch.
He takes to you like a hog after persimmons.
This kitchen is so small you can't cuss a cat without getting hair in your mouth.
There's more than one way to kill a cat than by choking him on hot butter.
If it ain't chickens, it's feathers.
Images of animated cat from http://free-graphics.com, June 1999.
Images of boy with tongue stuck to pole, bird, man eating crow, losing head, and angry chicken from http://www.arttoday.com. member page. June 1999.
For more Ozarkian expressions, see the collection compiled by high school students at Lebanon, MO, featured in the following:
Massey, Ellen Gray, Ed. Bittersweet Country. New York: Doubleday, 1978.
various issues of Bittersweet magazine, 1973-83, published by Bittersweet, Inc., Lebanon, MO.
