Our southern language has long been a colorful and artful thing, with numerous rather unique words and expressions not commonly used in other parts of the country. We southerners of the old-time variety tend to talk slowly, so in order to speed things up we sometimes shorten words, or put two or three words together with special pronunciations to get things said a little quicker. Sometimes we invented words for things on the spot if we didn't know what to call them. That was probably the origin of words like thingamabob and dumafigit and whatchamacallit.
Sometime ago one of my nieces who had always lived in a northern city noticed one of our common southern words and asked me about it. She was asking about the expression "over yonder." Where is "yonder"? she asked. Well, I said, it's over yonder (I was pointing over yonder way to show her) or (pointing a different direction) it's over yonder that-a-way. OK, it's kind of hard to define yonder without using the yonder word. Anyway, yonder is some distance away in a certain direction, which you may point to, but not real far off. If it's a long ways off, it's not just over yonder; and if it's nearby, that's too close to be over yonder. Over yonder is like across the creek or across the river, or over the hill, or just beyond those woods over there, or it's over on the other side of yonder road. "Way over yonder" can be quite a bit more than "over yonder," farther away, that is, but still not too far away. "Way over yonder" is like "quite a ways off," but not like "a long ways off." I think most southerners still understand yonder, even though our talk has drifted pretty much into mid-westernish. The Ozark language needed "yonder" because in the Ozarks you have lots of hills and mountains and streams and valleys to be over, across there, yonder ways.
In Ozark, we had two words that I never used much, but one could often hear them. The two were similar in sound but spelled differently, although as with things Ozark, the pronunciation might depend on who was talking. One of the words is "peeked." Peeked is pronounced, "peek-ed" as in "You look a little peek-ed today. Are you feelin' OK?" Peeked meant that you were looking a little pale and weak, not ruddy and rosy and vital. Being "peeked" meant that you were kind of sick, but not real sick. Being really sick was quite a bit beyond being peeked. The other word is "piqued." Piqued is pronounced like Peeked, all as one syllable, unlike "peek-ed." Being piqued means that you are pretty much stirred up about something. Piqued doesn't quite rise to being angry or mad, but it means you are pretty much aggravated. Aggravated and aggavated mean pretty much the same thing, just different ways of pernouncin' the word.
Another clobbered-together word I like is "antiskygodlin." Antiskygodlin is when a thing is way off from the orientation it should have, or way off in the direction it is pointing. When a car skids off the road and ends up in a weird position, you can say it ended up all antiskygodlin off in the ditch. When you are setting off a rocket on the Fourth of July and it blasts off in an unexpected and unhappy direction, you can say it went off all antiskygodlin. If a fellow is building a cabin and his walls are not straight and his windows are all off at an angle, you can say his cabin is all "antiskygodlin"!
Another rather useful expression is "out of kilter." That means that things are not right with an apparatus. By bending a little, you can also apply the expression to people or organizations that are not functioning as they should. Out of kilter means that something is wrong which is messing up the works. You may not know just what is wrong, but you know it is out of kilter because it's not doing right, and you can describe it that way when you call the repairman. He is supposed to find out more precisely what is causing the trouble.
Sometimes we hear people talk about "doin' a one-eighty." That expression has many uses. It is useful in describing what happened to your car on the ice. "I was just driving along in a normal way, and suddenly my car did a one-eighty on the ice, and I was headed back the way I came." "Doin' a one-eighty" means suddenly and completely changing directions, usually turning completely around and going in the opposite direction from the way you were going before.
"Doin' a one-eighty" can also describe repentance, when a person has been avoiding God, but then does a turn-a-round and takes up the Lord's way. The expression, "doin a one-eighty" of course comes from the measure of angles in degrees. Taking a square corner is "doin' a ninety." Turning fully around opposite is making a 180 degree turn or "doin' a one-eighty!"
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Editor's note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge and an award-winning columnist, is vice president of Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.
Editorial on 01/11/2017