# Your favorite "Southern-ism"

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-southern-ism/265170>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [September 20, 2004, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-southern-ism/265170 "2004-09-20T18:54:59Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 5

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**Author:** ![Spavined\_Gelding](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/958977/32.png) [@Spavined\_Gelding](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spavined_Gelding)\
**Post date:** [September 26, 2004, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-southern-ism/265170/81 "2004-09-26T13:30:22Z")

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These are my father’s. He was from Cleveland but I figure he picked them up in the army.

I don’t know him from Adam’s off ox. (The off ox is the ox on the right side of the team and farthest away from the teamster. The other ox is the near ox.)

As ugly as forty rods of mud fence…

He stacked arms at Appomattox.

The last one made no sense to me until I read Roy Blout’s **Anthology of Southern Humor** , where he says it refers to a man who sticks with a hard job to the end, like the men of Lee’s army who were still with their regiments and still had their arms and equipment when the end came.

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**Author:** ![Carm6773](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/2bfe46/32.png) [@Carm6773](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carm6773)\
**Post date:** [September 26, 2004, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-southern-ism/265170/82 "2004-09-26T13:58:49Z")

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> [@Spavined Gelding](#):
>
> I don’t know him from Adam’s off ox.

Or: I don’t know him from Adam’s housecat.

Referring to someone getting chewed out: He was all over him like white on rice.

Something amazing: Holy cats and little fishes!

Someone clueless: He couldn’t find his a$$ with a map and a flashlight (bless his heart).

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**Author:** ![Flipstrip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f6c823/32.png) [@Flipstrip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flipstrip)\
**Post date:** [September 26, 2004, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-southern-ism/265170/83 "2004-09-26T18:24:34Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> From rackensack
> 
> Well, it may be unique to Arkansas, but not necessarily to the western border; I mainly grew up in the eastern part of the state (Woodruff, Prairie, and Monroe Counties), but my dad said it all the time about my mom – or the variant “if you hung her with a silk rope” (which argues for the “new” bit being mainly about the quality of the material, not about any supposed advantage in making the process painless).

Thanks rackensack, I’m going to dance at your wedding! (Meaning – “I’m grateful for what you said/did.”)

I’ve never heard the silk rope variant, but it sheds some light on the saying. (The “painless” explanation was the one my late mother offered me when I asked her what it meant.)

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