Who knows what a toddick or taddle is? I did not until my friend Dargan reported it from the Nantahala. “Ben didn’t git a full turn o’ meal, but jest a toddick.” When a farmer goes to one of our little tub-mills, mentioned in previous chapters, he leaves a portion of the meal as toll. This he measures out in a toll-dish or toddick or taddle (the name varies with the locality) which the mill-owner left for that purpose. Toddick, then, is a small measure. A turn of meal is so called because “each man’s corn is ground in turn—he waits his turn.”
When one dines in a cabin back in the hills he will taste some strange dishes that go by still stranger names. Beans dried in the pod, then boiled “hull and all,” are called leather-breeches (this is not slang, but the regular name). Green beans in the pod are called snaps; when shelled they are shuck-beans. The old Germans taught their Scotch and English neighbors the merits of scrapple, but here it is known as poor-do. Lath-open bread is made from biscuit dough, with soda and buttermilk, in the usual way, except that the shortening is worked in last. It is then baked in flat cakes, and has the peculiar property of parting readily into thin flakes when broken edgewise. I suppose that poor-do was originally poor-doin’s, and lath-open bread denotes that it opens into lath-like strips. But etymology cannot be pushed recklessly in the mountains, and I offer these clews as a mere surmise.
Your hostess, proffering apple sauce, will ask, “Do you love sass?” I had to kick my chum Andy’s shins the first time he faced this question. It is well for a traveler to be forewarned that the word love is commonly used here in the sense of like or relish.
If one is especially fond of a certain dish he declares that he is a fool about it. “I’m a plumb fool about pickle-beans.” Conversely, “I ain’t much of a fool about liver” is rather more than a hint of distaste. “I et me a bait” literally means a mere snack, but jocosely it may admit a hearty meal. If the provender be scant the hostess may say, “That’s right at a smidgen,” meaning little more than a mite; but if plenteous, then there are rimptions.
To “grabble ’taters” is to pick from a hill of new potatoes a few of the best, then smooth back the soil without disturbing the immature ones.
If the house be in disorder it is said to be all gormed or gaumed up, or things are just in a mommick.
When a man is tired he likely will call it worried; if in a hurry, he is in a swivvet; if nervous, he has the all-overs; if declining in health, he is on the down-go. If he and his neighbor dislike each other, there is a hardness between them; if they quarrel, it is a ruction, a rippit, a jower, or an upscuddle—so be it there are no fatalities which would amount to a real fray.
A choleric or fretful person is tetchious. Survigrous (ser-vi-grus) is a superlative of vigorous (here pronounced vi-grus, with long i): as “a survigrous baby,” “a most survigrous cusser.” Bodaciously means bodily or entirely: “I’m bodaciously ruint” (seriously injured). “Sim greened him out bodaciously” (to green out or sap is to outwit in trade). To disfurnish or disconfit means to incommode: “I hope it has not disconfit you very bad.”
To shamp means to shingle or trim one’s hair. A bastard is a woods-colt or an outsider. Slaunchways denotes slanting, and si-godlin or si-antigodlin is out of plumb or out of square (factitious words, of course—mere nonsense terms, like catawampus).
Critter and beast are usually restricted to horse and mule, and brute to a bovine. A bull or boar is not to be mentioned as such in mixed company, but male-brute and male-hog are used as euphemisms.[9]