A Yankee’s Guide to Southern Phrases


Bless Your Heart: The most back handed kind words spoken in the south. Means, while you’re sweet, you’re also stupid, you don’t quite get it and I feel sorry for you.

Fixin to: About to do something, almost ready, thinking about doing something.

Nervous as a long tail cat in a room full of rockin’ chairs: Nervous to the point of being jumpy.

Reckon So: suppose or believe something is true.

Yankee: Anyone originating north of the Mason Dixon line.

Redneck: Polite, blue collar individual who loves hunting, country music, and blue jeans. Add alcohol and anything can happen.

Y’all: You guys

All y’all: More than five people

I could eat the north end of a south-bound polecat: Starving!

Lil’ Dogie: A motherless calf, a calf separated from its cow.

Hankering: Craving something

Fair to middlin’: Doing okay

Three sheets to the wind: Drunker than a skunk

Passel: A whole bunch

Hold your horses: Be patient

Grinning like a possum eating a sweet potato: Happy as can be

He’s a snake in the grass: Mean as all get out

Gussied Up: Dressed fancy

Halfcocked: Acting on assumptions or partial information. Based on old firearms, that if not fully cocked (thus halfcocked), would not fire.

Barkin’ up the wrong tree: Misguided, mistaken

Kicked the bucket: Died

See all the way to Christmas: Skirt so short you can see what you shouldn’t be seeing.

Hodunk: backwoods town with no value