strong like ball

[Wilson Gray]

On Mar 3, 2005, at 1:44 PM, Beverly Flanigan wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Beverly Flanigan <flanigan at OHIOU.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: strong like ball
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> At 11:09 PM 3/2/2005, you wrote:
>> My grandmother used both "greedy-gut" and "glutton" with wild abandon.
>> However, I don't recall that she ever said just plain "gut(s)." She
>> used "insides" for chickens or named the individual parts thereof,
>> when
>> asked. Since we had our own chickens, I saw my grandfather kill a
>> chicken by literally wringing its neck. He picked up the chicken by
>> its
>> head, made a particular movement with his wrist, and the chicken's
>> head
>> remained in his hand and its body fell to the ground, where it ran
>> around like a chicken with its head cut or, rather, torn off.
>>
>> So, I've seen a literal slap on the wrist, a neck literally wrung, and
>> a chicken literally running around with its head torn off.
>
> I have too--in fact, my mother did the chicken-neck wringing so that we
> could have "chicken every Sunday."

Watching the chicken's headless body run around used to scare the hell
out of me when I was a little kid. At the same time, it was totally
fascinating, like a horror movie. BTW, it can also be fun to explain to
city-slicker types the origin of that saying about chickens and heads.

>> I've just heard a character on CSI: NY say for[beid] for "forbade." O,
>> tempora! O, mores!
>>
>> -Wilson
>
> I hear this all the time--no biggie.  But re. an earlier thread,
> today, on
> our local radio, I heard a student announcer say "... the 10 million
> dollar
> jackpot drawling...."  She was obviously reading a script, so the
> intrusive
> /l/ intrudes even in spite of print.  Not uncommon in southern Ohio.
>