A transplanted Northerner wrote me recently for help in “translating some of the quaint local terms used to describe units of measure into some usable equivalent.”
’Nother words: Even after nearly three decades of living in the South, bless his heart, he didn’t know the difference between a “tad” and a “smidgen,” much less a “passel” and a “mite.”
First off, a smidgen is the direct opposite of “a right smart.” This should give you some context. What? You don’t know what “a right smart” is? Well, it’s “a whole heap.”
I had to chuckle thinking how this fella would be puzzled if he heard a conversation last week between me and my collard-growing neighbor.
He’d arrived with a brown paper sack full of the finest frostbitten collards it’s been my privilege to eat, but first asked, quite seriously, “Is it a good mess, do you think?”
“Sure, it’s a mess,” I said. “It’s more than a mess, it’s a gracious plenty.”
Now, pay attention, hons, especially you hons who hail from places which prefer the rudimentary “cup” and “ounce” scale of measurement.
A mess has nothing to do with the tidiness of your kitchen. It is the exact amount of food required to feed your family at one “setting.”
This is opposed to “a gracious plenty,” which pretty much guarantees leftovers, but not many, just a “piddlin’” amount. There’s a fine line between a piddlin’ or “teense” and the amount that should be “chucked,” the process by which everyone in the room agrees that the leftovers are so “puny” or “trifling” that you should just “chuck” ’em out the back door and get on with your life.
The Southern kitchen overflows with colorful terms. When a pound cake fails to rise properly, it is pronounced “flat as a flitter.” When too much spice or similar irreversible disaster has occurred, the dish is “all momicked up.” (This is not to be confused with what happens when you fail to add enough liquid to a dish and it becomes “all gommed up.”) If you eat too much cake, you’re not “overweight,” you are “six ax handles across.”
In the Southern kitchen, ingredients aren’t mixed, they’re “smished together.” If you’ve made too many deviled eggs (an impossibility, of course) you should announce that you’re “hip to haunch and cheek to jowl” with ’em.
A friend who was invited to dinner at the home of her prospective Yankee in-laws knew she’d goofed when, at the end of the meal, she announced that she didn’t want dessert because she was already “chewing high.” The marriage, which did take place, was later annulled, and she has often said that the look on her fiancé’s face should’ve told her to run from that house like her clothes were on fire.
A few years ago, when there was first talk of converting from cups and ounces to liters and, uh, whatever goes with them, I said that Southerners should refuse to go metric in favor of going “me-maw.” Wouldn’t the world be a better place if we did that? Sure it would. A right smart better.