Scat Tom, tail's in the gravy!
A friend recently sent me a video ridiculing the convention of saying "bless you" when somone sneezes. While funny, I was much more amused by the fact that we (my family and I) don't use that at all and instead say "Scat Tom, tail's in the gravy". After chuckling to myself a bit, I decided to investigate further and see if that was just my family being weird (which isn't unusual) or if it was much more common than I thought.
After searching far and wide (or at least Google) I discovered that it commonly heard in the south (southeastern United States), particularly in the Appalachian Mountains where I grew up. There wasn't a definitive explanation of the origins of the phrase much less why anybody would think to say that in response to a sneeze. This got me to wondering what other phrases that I commonly use that aren't so common to other English speakers. Here's a few more words and phrases I came up with:
Tater wagon a rollin' -- Thunder. If you ever hear someone say that they hear the tater wagon, it just means they hear thunder. If you've ever put taters (potatoes) in a wagon and pulled it along for a bit this one is easy to understand.
Groundhogs making coffee -- Steam/fog rising off a mountain, particularly early in the morning
Count -- Good. "Was supper much count" is asking if it was good, "It was no count a'tall" is saying it was no good at all
Comes by it honest -- Basically means inherited. If someone is a known liar and crook and then their kids grow up and act in similar fashion they are said to come by it honest. Generally used as a sort of mitigating circumstances comment.
Meaner than a stripe-ed snake -- Not sure what snake is being referred to but this is about the epitome of meaness, can't really get much worse than that (or at least that's the context)
That's enough quirky bits of language for one evening. Any of y'all reading this have some curious or uncommon bits of language that you use?
Oh, in Puerto Rico we say "salud" (health) when someone sneeze... now I wonder why we say that!
I hadn't heard of that one before, if you figure out why let me know!
That's interesting and amusing at the same time lol. Just like in the UK, depending on where you live, you tend to pick up different 'slang' for your local area.
Indeed. The area I'm from has historically been rather isolated so our dialect has kinda went its own way. It sometimes makes for some rather amusing communications breakdowns...
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