The cold weather this week brought lots of images to Facebook and lots of memories of my winters past. One picture in particular reminded me of the drafty old farmhouse Hubby #2 and I lived in when he was doing his internship and residency. It was on a busy street in east Denver, surrounded by newer houses. I learned it was the original farmhouse before the land was sold off and the resulting neighborhood developed around it. 

The house was a bungalow type, built of tan brick. It had the original double-hung windows, single pane with the wavy glass of old. A large covered front porch ran the entire width of the house. A large tree sat in the corner of the front yard…a bank lead down to the front sidewalk. The house had only one real bedroom, which we gave to my daughter. We slept on the sunporch at the back of the house. 

There was little, if any insulation in that house. A Petit Godin parlor stove sat in the living room. I burned coal when I could get it…much to the neighbor’s dismay. Eventually I resorted to a Kero-Sun stove in the middle of the living room. It heated up the living space to some degree, but I was really afraid to let it burn kerosene all night unattended. 

We had no money. I was working full time as an x-ray tech and medical assistant for a busy four doctor clinic about a half mile away, doing my best to support the family while my husband was in training. There were times I had to use my Sears charge card to buy Hickory Farms gift boxes of summer sausage and cheese in order to eat.

Someone posted a picture of frost on the inside of a corner of their house last week and I sent it to my daughter. I asked her if she remembered sleeping in her thick, footie jammies with a toboggan on her head to keep her warm. Some of my friends in Colorado had no idea what I was talking about. How could a sled keep my daughter warm at night?

I had to laugh. I grew up calling knit caps “toboggans”. As a matter of fact, when I first moved to Colorado, I couldn’t understand what people were talking about when they talked about taking their toboggan out and riding it in the snow. It took a while before I figured out it was a different kind of sled with a curled front on it. I had never seen one before I moved out west. Somewhere around 1929, the term toboggan (from the French Canadian “tabaganne”) which was indeed a sled. The knit cap became a “toboggan cap” and eventually “cap” was dropped. The word is typically used in the south and the Appalachian mountains.

I am the first to admit…I’m a bit of a word snob. When I was growing up, my mom bought me a set of encyclopedias, one a week, as bonuses at the grocery store. I read those, as well as the dictionary, when I ran out of books to read. I love words. They say when you write for public consumption, you should write at about an eighth grade level. I never agreed with that. I think we should all stretch our knowledge and learn new words. As a matter of fact, I have the “Word of the Day” from the dictionary app feed me new words every day. Sometimes I throw them in here just for fun.

There are different words for things in different areas of the country. West Virginia has a lot of colloquial phrases that have me scratching my head sometimes, if not outright gritting my teeth. Mr. FixIt is an educated man, but he a) grew up here and b) worked his entire career in a factory. I sometimes have to ask him what the heck he’s talking about.

Not only are there different words, but different pronunciations. English is a quirky language anyway. Add an accent and it can complicate things. Here in West Virginia, you might hear “crick” for creek or “boosh” for bush or “poosh” for push. Roof is often pronounced with a long oooo sound. The one that sets my teeth on edge is “‘fer I kin”….as in, “I need to get the saw fer I kin cut that board.” It stems from old English. “Before I can” originated as “afore I kin” and became the more colloquial “‘fer I kin”. There’s “over yonder”. A “pretty fur piece” has nothing to do with an animal pelt and every thing to do with how far it is to a particular destination. 

What are some words that are pronounced differently where you live? ❤️

“Gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body.”

Proverbs 16:24 ESV