To dovin39: Hebrew and Yiddish are not the same language, as you say. But they are not totally different. I understand that some Jews write Yiddish with the Hebrew alphabet. Yiddish is a "made up language", perhaps a creole, made from Hebrew and primarily German by European Jews. The Jews ...

As an old farm boy, friable means soil that is easily worked. This fits in with the crumbly definition. In my native part of Texas, south of San Antonio, the rich brown sandy loam is definitely friable. In my present home, Dallas County, Texas, the mucky, black-gumbo soil, though rich, is far from f...

In Texas we say "whenever" when perhaps "when" would do just as well. "Whenever I get up in the morning, I eat a bowl of grits" To say "whatever" as a response to someone's expressed opinion is rude in my book. But you can say, "Julie, whatever possessed ...

KatyBr,

I know what a "gee-oh-duck" is thanks to Betty McDonnald and "The Egg and I." But what does "Pally-up" mean?

Do you realize how many names we have in English for waterways? I made a list of those I knew one time but I misplaced it. The list was quite long. There is reputed to be a waterway in Oklahoma named Spring Creek Brook River, it being the river into which Spring Creek Brook emptied and Spring Creek ...

Some words are just asking to die. If you don't drive a roadster with a raccoon tail on the radio aerial then you should not even know what cockamamie means. The word deserves to die. It is just too cockamamie to exist.

By the way, I made a perfect Rebel score on the Rebel-Yankee Test - without cheating. I am a true son of the South. I am a genealogist and I have absolutely no Yankee ancestors. Maryland is a Southern state. One ancestor strayed into PA for a while because he was a Quaker but he couldn't take it up ...

In the South Texas of my youth we always said coke for any soft drink other than a doctor (Doctor Pepper - the native soft drink of Texas.) In my parents day any soft drink was a sodey-wawter. Now we frequently just say drinks since likker is forbidden in my circle of friends and family. I like Peps...

Many of my elders in South Texas pronounced these words alike: rinse, ranch and wrench. The sound is of the standard pronunciation for the word ranch except with a long a. I once had a student from Mississippi who pronounced these words alike: all, oil, and awl. The sound is of the standard pronounc...

I can actually spell "people" and "pronounce" but my fingers cannot always do what I tell them to do.

Where I come from in SouthTexas a significant number of the older peopel pronouncee the word "wash" with a long o and an r as "worsh".