Need more lessons on talking like a Southerner? We’re back with readers’ favorite sayings

If you’ve walked outside in shorts and flip flops in November and complained about the cold, you’re already our people, no matter where you came here from.

But if you still think barbecue is a verb and you don’t know to carry your groceries in a buggy, you may struggle sometimes to understand your neighbors.

We’re here to help.

A few months ago, we coached you on your fixin’ to’s and other phrases spoken by people born or raised in North Carolina or elsewhere in the South. As hoped, our little guide generated a mess of responses with useful expressions we had missed.

So here’s another serving of Southern sayings, along with a few “corrections” and derivations some readers preferred to our original offerings. We know Southerners didn’t invent all these any more than we invented sweet tea. But like that elixir, which the South transformed by serving it over ice, we have embraced these turns of phrase and made them our own.

How’s the weather?

Owing to our agricultural roots, we talk a lot about the weather, literally and metaphorically.

We answered the question, “How hot is it?” in a previous story.

But now winter’s on the way, and soon there will be evenings when the hawk is out or the hawk is biting, which means it’s cold. Sometime in December it’s going to be colder than a well-digger’s rear end. Come February, it might even be colder than a witch’s teat in a brass bra.

February also is when we typically get our rainiest weather: the frog-stranglers, the gully-washers, the days when it’s raining cats and dogs.

You’ll know that’s going to happen when you see it coming up a cloud or blowing up a storm. But then comes March and April, when it will be fairing off.

Sometimes in spring, we get sunshine and rain simultaneously, and that’s when our grandmothers always said, “The Devil’s beatin’ his wife.” It seemed a casual observation coming from strong Southern women who would have responded to such behavior by giving the Devil what-for with a frying pan.

If a Southerner warns you, “Don’t get caught in the rain in your summer clothes,” they’re probably really suggesting you’re being naive and could be taken advantage of. If they predict, “It’s gonna be too wet to plow,” what’s about to rain down is most likely retribution.

Is supper ready?

First, the evening meal traditionally was called supper in the South. The midday meal — especially the big one after church on Sunday — was called dinner.

If you wait too long to eat either of those, you might fall out, which is to faint. It’s also possible to fall out laughing, but not when you’re hungry and it also doesn’t imply a lack of consciousness.

You might be so hungry you could eat the stumps off 40 acres of new ground, or maybe eat a sow and 9 pigs.

Anyone who did eat all that might feel tight as a tick on a three-day suck.

If you can’t say something nice

Many Southern mothers forbid children from using the word “stupid,” so an observation on someone’s intelligence might be hedged with, “I don’t mean any harm, but…” or, “I’m not sayin’. I’m just sayin’.”

And then you might say: “That girl is about as bright as a burned-out lightbulb” or “He talks just to hear his head (or his teeth) rattle.”

A person who’s not real sharp might be a few bricks shy of a load, their elevator doesn’t go all the way to the top, they’re one French fry short of a Happy Meal, or the lights are on but ain’t nobody home.

We would never say this, but grandpa might: That boy is an idjit, (idiot), or even a Pure-T idjit, and he could talk the hind parts off of a mule.

She comes to choir practice every Wednesday night but she couldn’t carry a tune in a bushel basket/a five-gallon bucket.

He hasn’t combed his hair in so long he looks like the north end of a south-bound bear.

When someone is getting long in the tooth, it might be observed that they’re older than dirt or two days older than water.

Of a thin person, it might be said: they wouldn’t weigh 100 pounds soaking wet or they’d have to run around in the shower to get wet.

She’s so lazy she wouldn’t be a taster in a pie factory.

And there’s the unkind but picturesque he fell out of an ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. Or, they might have been beaten with an ugly stick.

We’re fixin’ to teach you to talk like an NC native: A Guide to Southern Sayings

Well, honestly

Maybe the person but can’t be trusted because:

▪ He’s a bald-faced liar.

▪ She’d steal the pennies off her dead mother’s eyes.

▪ He’s crooked as a barrel of snakes.

▪ She’d steal the shortenin’ out of a biscuit.

▪ He’s slicker than eel manure/snot.

As for me, ‘pon (upon) my honor, I’m telling the truth, because my mother told me to stop telling stories or she’d slap the breath out of me. She also said a lie doesn’t care who tells it, and I should tell the truth and shame the Devil.

Some people we know, the truth just isn’t in them, and they’re not worth the powder and lead it would take to blow ‘em to hell.

But if I say, “I tell you the truth,” it may be just a way to signal that I strongly agree with whatever you just said — or that something I’m about to tell you is so true I would testify to it in court.

I do declare

We have strong emotions in the South. A girl doesn’t just get upset, she’s got her panties in a bunch (or a wad), and a man might have his bowels in an uproar.

In anger or frustration, a Southerner might say

▪ Hell’s bells!

▪ Great day in the morning!

▪ Dog bite the luck!

▪ Damn his eyes!

▪ I swear! or I Suwannee!, or just, I swan!

A go-to phrase we sprinkle into conversation in the South like camellia bushes in the landscape is, Do what? So handy, it can indicate you didn’t clearly hear what someone said or you don’t quite understand its meaning. When spoken slowly and pronounced, “dew wut?” it means you strongly disagree but you’re not ready to get in a fistfight. Yet.

A sense of place

Instead of asking someone where they live, a Southerner might ask, “Where do you stay?”

The answer might be “over yonder,” which can mean across the room, or “way over yonder,” which could be miles from here. As the crow flies, it might just be a few minutes from here, but that’s a moot point if you have to travel a crooked road. If you’re trying to get to a remote location, that’s five miles past East By-Jesus or East Egypt.

If it’s well centered, it’s in the smack middle.

If you get stuck riding behind a tractor on a two-lane road, you might think, “if he was moving any slower, he’d be going backwards.”

If I’m alone at the house, there’s nobody here but me and Jesus.

Units of measure

▪ A mess, usually refers to fresh produce, such as a mess of collards or turnip greens. That’s as many as you feel like washing and cooking. A passel is of similar size, but doesn’t usually refer to food

▪ All get-out, as much as imaginable for the situation. Ex: The truck is dirty as all get-out.

▪ What-all. This can be all-encompassing as well. Ex: For Thanksgiving, we had turkey and dressing, green beans, rolls, cornbread, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie and I don’t know what-all.

▪ A piece, meaning some distance down the road, commonly used when giving directions: Go down this road a piece. Could be a fur piece, (fur meaning far).

▪ Not big as a minute, meaning small.

▪ Yea (pronounced yay) big, accompanied by outstretched hands indicating actual size.

▪ More than you can shake a stick at, meaning lots.

A word of advice

Some sayings are meant to convey wisdom, cite a universal truth or offer gentle guidance. For instance:

▪ You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig, which can mean don’t try to fool me, but also, you can’t make this situation better than it is, no matter how hard you try.

▪ The hit dog always hollers, an equivalent to somebody complaining because the truth about them hurts.

▪ You can’t squeeze blood from a turnip, which suggests a lost cause.

▪ You gotta hold your mouth right, meaning there is some finesse and maybe a bit of luck required to get something to work.

▪ Too many cooks spoil the gravy.

▪ Don’t go borrowing trouble, meaning don’t worry about what hasn’t happened yet or what isn’t your concern.

▪ Don’t disfurnish yourself, meaning don’t give away more than you can afford to.

▪ And people in hell want iced water, said in response to someone acting entitled to something.

▪ The sun doesn’t shine on the same dog’s ass every day, meaning nobody is lucky all the time.

Not where I come from

Readers took issue with a few of the sayings we quoted earlier.

We mentioned sigogglin,’ (pronounced SIGH-gog-lin) as a way people in the N.C. mountains might describe something that’s crooked or out-of-true. A reader said they always heard it as sigodlin.

Nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs is calm compared to a reader’s being more nervous than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

A fritter isn’t flat, a reader said, so the correct saying is flat as a flitter.

Another said tenaciousness is not hair ON a biscuit, but hanging on like hair IN a biscuit.

And finally, though we grew up hearing about the occasional good fortune of feral pigs, a reader said the correct saying is, even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in a while. We concede that a squirrel is a good regional substitute, but wild hogs love acorns and presumably, odds are that a even blind hog will eventually find one.

Y’all come back

It’s been fun. Tell your mama and them we said hey.

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