I am reading a good novel about slavery, just before the Civil War. There are so many words and phrases from that time (1855 in Virginia) that are new to me. For example, when one slave was freed, she had to leave her poor 8-year old son with the white master. She and her husband (also a freed slave) were planning to buy their son back, so upon leaving him, they said that they would be back for him "before you can turn around good."

Obviously it means soon. However, I haven't heard this term, have you?

They also mentioned that the slaves ate "rape" for meals, though Shu reminded me of the rape plant. Still, seeing that startled me, considering our much more common use of the word today.

Is the novel The Known World by Edward P. Jones?

I searched for the phrase, and it's so rare that I thought that perhaps the novelist invented it. But I did find one person using the phrase on a bulletin board. So it's a toss-up: is the phrase a real one, or did was board-poster a fellow who got it from Jones? I've registered on that board and am sending him a private message there, asking him.

Is the novel The Known World by Edward P. Jones?

Yes, wordnerd! Thanks for all your hard work to find it. I thought maybe I just hadn't heard it.

The oil-seed rape plant (aka canola) is quite a common sight in fields in this country nowadays, especially in the Eastern counties. There was quite a fuss a while back because limited trials of genetically modified crops were authorised by the government.

Can anyone here cite any written works -- scholarly or otherwise -- about the native languages of the imported slaves? No doubt their owners prohibited the speaking of native languages but one would think something would have survived.

In the apparent absence of such vestiges we might call this a massive philocide, or is it linguacide?

Hi,

I didn't invent the phrase "before you can turn around good", that is an old southernism that means "very fast". The actual wording would have been: "afore you kin git turned round good", but most people would think that was ignorant so we clean it up pretty good so people can still understand it. I am a 6th generation southerner and so learned a lot of phrases like this and still use them. I noticed you picked this phrase up from a novel about slavery. We, who grew up in families that are original to the south, use many phrases from that era due to our constant interaction with black or as my granny would say "colored" people. Our family did not own slaves, most folks down here didn't as that was part of the "well to do" landowners. The average southern farm family was poor and had a hard enough time just feeding their own families. My family has a farm that has been in our family for over a 100 years. We raised timber and mules, and the only cotton we grew was for home use as my granddaddy would say that cotton wears the soil out. We grew corn, hogs, and vegetables for sale. However, many of the southernisms we use are a blend of black traditional and southern white traditional sayings. It is probably a leaving off from the days of slavery, but all us children played together, and we picked up their speech and they picked up ours.

Most southerners are trying too hard to "blend in" with the rest of the nation, but there are still a few of us that regularly use old phrasing to describe things and really do not want to blend in with the rest of the country. That is one reason you will find most southernisms dying off. The young children don't hear them from their parents anymore which is going to make wordsmithing rather hard in years to come.

If you have other questions about regional sayings, send me an email and I will try to help. If you didn't grow up down here in the south, it will be harder to find what certain phrases mean. BTW - my granny thought anyone who lived "nawth of Atlanter" was a yankee and a carpetbagger". We're Georgians, and my children are the seventh generation to live here.

Take care
Sidepasser

philocide

Killing love? Philology < philos 'love' + logos 'word' :- fond of words or fond of study.

Goober, as in peanut, and cooter, as in tutrle, are both usually thought to be of African origin, and the words yam and okra also. I would assume that many of those people brought to this country spoke different languages. You might search on the language Gullah in Google.

Welcome, sidepasser!

Thanks so much for the information. We would really value your input here; we hope you stick around. I am reading the book, and so far it is excellent.

No doubt their owners prohibited the speaking of native languages but one would think something would have survived.

Excellent question, Jerry. It is our curiosity that I love about this site.

Sidepasser,
Where do you reside? I ache for good ole Southern talk... now live north of Atlanta. My grandmother's favorite phrase was: "I fixed enough food for Sherman's army." It still lives today... I always cook too much for my small parties.

Or, if a room was messy: "It looks like Sherman's army just passed through."

My family has always been from the north so this southern talk is very interesting to me. We surely wouldn't refer to Sherman's army here.

My logophile friend found this word when reading a book about the southern attitude towards slavery, referring to the complexity of the time: 'Manichaean' - meaning relating to the doctrine of dualism (i.e. a Manichaean conflict between good and evil.) I hadn't heard of the word before.

It's good to have you aboard, Sidepasser!

A southernism I can remember from my South Carolina childhood is "jumping the broom," or getting married. And I believe that the word, "jazz," is from an earlier slave term.

quote:

---

...'Manichaean' - meaning relating to the doctrine of dualism (i.e. a Manichaean conflict between good and evil.)

---

The Manichaeans were a gnostic sect that followed the teachings of Mani, a born around 216 A.D. in Persia. His Zoroastrian-influenced Gnosticism taught the eternal conflict between Good and Evil, Light and Dark, Knowledge and Ignorance, Spirit and Matter. Manichaeans believed that matter was evil and spirit was good, hence the creator of the material world -- the Judeo-Orthodox Christian God -- was evil, having created matter as a prison for the spirit, and Jesus was good, having come to free man's divine spirit from its earthly prison. Jesus, being divine, also had no human material form and thus couldn't have died on the cross...

You can see how this got them into trouble with the orthodox church.

This was actually a relatively large sect, possibly the dominant sect, east of the Greco-Roman part of Asia. The christians Marco Polo encountered may have been Manichaeans.

There is evidence that our tradition of shaking hands in greeting originated with the Manichaeans. Apparently handshaking in the Greco-Roman world was reserved for sealing contracts -- let's shake on it -- and the Manichaeans adopted the practice as a greeting among themselves "as a sign they themselves are of those saved from the darkness".

Interesting, neveu! It's times like this when I realize how very little I actually know.

My logophile friend told me a story of how he was helping this southern gentleman with lifting boxes when he was a young man in the Army. The gentleman told him he couldn't pay him anything for the help. However, he gave him a tip. He said that they will make him take a hike the next day. The southern gentleman told my friend not to sit in the shade where the "rehhhd bugs" are. My friend was the only one who didn't sit in the shade. the next day the rest all had this unpleasant itching dermatitis, but my friend didn't.

It was chiggers.