I just read a great book that took place in Shirley Falls. They used an exclamation that I had never heard..."Jesum Crow". From where is that?

What are some of your favorite exclamations?

Cool Beans!

Well, doggies! (I was a Beverly Hillbillies fan!)

D'oh!!!!!!!!!

Foxes' Arses

Well, I'll be hornswoggled !

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Originally posted by Kalleh:
"Jesum Crow"

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I couldn't find "Jesum Crow", but I did find "Jeezum Crow" in an online book, Carleton County Colloquialisms. This delightful little book contains (at present) 144 words and phrases used in Carleton County, New Brunswick, Canada, including three words related to speed: "humsuck", "piss-cut" and "whiff".

It's also a colloquialism. According to the article, Vermont's "colorful dialect" is fast disappearing. That's a shame.

"Jeezum Crow" will survive, though, since www.jeezumcrow.com is a Vermont website.

Tinman

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Originally posted by tinman:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Asa Lovejoy:
Well, doggies! (I was a Beverly Hillbillies fan!)

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I believe it was
"whee doggie" or "whee, doggies".


Tinman (another Beverly Hillbillies fan)

When I was stationed in Panama, a popular local expression was "Chuleta!" (choo-LEH-tah) which meant, literally, "pork chop" but more often meant, non-literally, "Oh, man!" as in "Chuleta! Woman with large breasts approaching!!" (or words to that effect...)

Unfortunately, another all-too-common expression was "Chucha Madre" (CHOO-cha MAH-drey) which meant (to put it politely) "Your mother's vagina!" and was used primarily when you wanted the listener to gnash his teeth and turn his hands into fists. Don't ask me why they so often wanted this to occur but they did.

I say "unfortunately" because they both begin with a "chew" sound which (and I'm speaking from experience here) could cause confusion on the part of some poor language-addled gringo. Calling an opponent a "pork chop" was not all that bad but reverse them the other way around and you had an awkward situation on your hands.

I once caught my mistake and corrected it halfway through speaking the word, having it come out "Chucha-leta" which I then defined as "your mother's pork chop." I'm sure that Spanish has its equivalent to the OED but I seriously doubt it's in there.

In the Collins Spanish dictionary the word "chucha does not appear although its masculine alternative, "chucho" does.

It means "dog" although how it differs from the more common word, "perro" I don't know.

That Spanish has more than one word for dog does not surprise me when you consider how many we have in English.

Richard English

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Originally posted by Richard English:


That Spanish has more than one word for dog does not surprise me when you consider how many we have in English.

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There is probably one more word for "dog" than you know about:

CRACKY: A small, noisy mongrel dog...

Dictionary of Newfoundland English ,G.M.Storey, w.J.Kirwin and J.D.A.Widdowson, eds. (Toronto: U. of Toronto Press, 1982) 119.

Or, a variant:

CRACKIE A small,yappie dog of mixed breed.

The Canadian Oxford Dictionary,Katherine Barber, ed.(Toronto: Oxford U. Press, 1998) 327.

Rather strange that a small island nation could produce two of the most popular purebred dogs in the world (the "Newfoundland" and the "Labrador Retriever") and then invent a word to describe "mongrel".

I heard another exclamation this week that I had never heard before. When Roy Williams left as the basketball coach of Kansas to go to North Carolina, he was quoted as saying, "Dadgum it! I feel like a traitor!"

Ah, Kalleh, welcome to the world of minced oaths (click on "Spotlight"). It was once (and still is by some) considered to be sacriligious to use God's name in vain. So euphemisms for God were devised. Words like damn were also taboo and developed their own euphemisms. Thus, God damn became goldarn, consarn, dadgum and so on. Even innocent-sounding words and phrases like golly and oh my gosh are minced oaths. For Pete's sake is considered a substitute for For God's sake. The Pete referred to is probably St. Peter.

What the Sam Hill ... is called an "avoidance phrase" (new term to me). It supposedly is a euphemism for what in the damned Hell ....

The AHD comments on euphemisms for damned.

Tinman

[This message was edited by tinman on Sat Apr 19th, 2003 at 2:20.]

There are probably a lot more of these euphemisms, if you go back a bit in time. For example, Zounds! meant by God's-wounds!

Oh, thanks, Tinman, for those wonderful links. I had never heard of "minced oaths" before, though certainly I have heard them spoken.

Two others were favorites of W. C. Fields:

"Mother of Pearl!" a reference to the Virgin Mary, and

"Go milk an elk" which, I was told years ago, was somehow derived from "kiss my ass" though I couldn't tell you why.

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Originally posted by C J Strolin: "Go milk an elk"

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Could you be thinking of "milk a bull"? As in, "Arguing with this woman is like trying to milk a bull, you won't get anywhere, and you'll piss the bull off."

Apparently this phrase dates back at least as far as the time of Elizabeth I (see last verse). A vaudeville skit, popular in rural areas, featured the city slicker who offers to help with the farm chores: the farmer hands him a pail and asks him to milk the bull.

And back on October 5, 2001, remarks of Afghan ambassador Farhadi were transated as, "Pakistan has constantly advised the rest of the world to engage with the Taliban. This has proved to be like trying to milk a bull."

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Originally posted by Hic et ubique:
Could you be thinking of "_milk a bull_"? As in, "Arguing with this woman is like trying to milk a bull, you won't get anywhere, and you'll piss the bull off."

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No, I've got the "go milk an elk" quote on a W. C. Fields recording taken from a movie, though I can't recall which one.

And regarding your quotation, I've heard it as "Never try to teach a pig to whistle. It can't be done and it just aggravates the pig." Twain, I think.

Lastly, regarding milking bulls, yes, it's an image that has been repeatedly used over the years. I once wrote a parody of the sickeningly sweet (UK = "treacley," I think?) Debbie Boone hit song "You Light Up My Life" which was titled, somewhat obviously "You Screw Up My Life." The last verse:

Out on a farm, you taught me how to milk a cow.
Raised in the city, it was all new to me.
You laughed at the joke you cruelly played upon me.
I had my hands full when I tried to milk the bull!
(Chorus: 'Cause yo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-ou screw up my li-i-i-i-ife etc etc)

When asked a question that he has no answer for, a friend of mine online always types: "DIIK?" Which is short for "Danged If I Know?"

In response to a question when I haven't the slightest clue of an answer, I'm likely to answer BTSOOM!" (pronounced "b'tsoom")

The question that follows is, naturally enough, "What's that supposed to mean?" to which the reply is, of course, "Beats Me!"

(Maybe this should have been posted in the Six Letters thread...?)

Am I the only person not to understand how "BTSOOM" translates into "Beats me"??

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Originally posted by C J Strolin:
Am I the only person not to understand how "BTSOOM" translates into "Beats me"??

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I dunno, are you. Beats the s**t out of me !

Non curo ! Si metrum no habet, non est poema.

Read all about my travels around the world here.
Read even more of my travel writing and poems on my weblog.

Bingo! [looking-slightly-abashed emoticon]