Inspired bythis in GD, I went to visit The Dictionary of Regional English here.
Towards the bottom of the homepage is a “can you help” section. Take a look. I’ll wait.
So, any words or phrases you recognized. What were they? Where’dja hear it? This Teeming Millionth would like to know.
P.S. If anyone is looking to buy Biggirl a really expensive birthday/Christmas/Just cause you’re you present, the first 3 volumes of DARE would be real nice.
I want a subscription to NADS.
The only one that sounded familiar was the “pounced him one” usage. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard that, perhaps from my grandmother.
I was actually able to fill in the gaps about ‘potato thump’.
That is just the coolest website ever.
From http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/dare/Queries9899.html
potato thump–“Mashed potatoes.” We have two New England quotations for this, as well as one for tater tunk in the same sense. (Tunk is well attested in the Northeast in the sense “thump, beat.”) Is either one of these expressions still used?
My grandmother (born in 1934), who grew up in a poor home in central Vermont (Williamstown and Graniteville area) has said that ‘mashed potato thump’ is what you call potatoes when you are too poor to have butter and milk to put in your potatoes, and you mash them with bacon grease. She said that it made them very thick and glossy, and when they cooled off even a little bit they went ‘thump!’ onto your plate from the spoon. She said that it was very unappetizing, but they were poor, and it was the best they had when she was growing up. Someone of her generation would know the term in this area, but I doubt that anyone much younger would. It seems to have been used mostly during the depression.