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<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Thank you, to all who
responded. This has been interesting, and I have learned something, both about
the particular phrase "pluff mud" and about methodology. I will try
to summarize what I have learned, and I will pass on this information to the
Charlestonian who originally asked me whether "pluff" was an older
pronunciation of "plough."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>First, I will preface this by
saying that a perception around Charleston and the lowcountry area of South
Carolina (which is pretty much the only place where this term is used, as far
as I can tell) is that in the term "pluff mud," "plough" is
the traditional spelling, and "pluff" is a modern,
"phonetic" spelling. (I'm using too many quotation marks here.) Here
is why I say that:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoListParagraph style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.75in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2'><![if !supportLists]><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>1.<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span></span><![endif]><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'>The person who first asked me about the term thought that that
was the case. She believed that "plough mud" got its name because it
was used in plowing/ploughing--as a fertilizer, I suppose.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Here are some other things
that I found through a web search:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoListParagraph style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.75in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2'><![if !supportLists]><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>2.<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span></span><![endif]><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'>"</span><em>The spirits urged me to roll down the windows
and breathe the musk-laden drug of the marsh. The scents of <u>plough mud</u>
and rotting marsh life filled my senses like a warm shower of rare perfume.</em><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'> "
>From a novel entitled <i>Sullivan's Island: A Lowcountry Tale</i>, by popular
author Dorothea Benton Frank (no relation to me, though I do have an Aunt Dot
who was a Frank before she got married.) Note that Sullivan's Island is in the Charleston
area.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoListParagraph style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.75in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2'><![if !supportLists]><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>3.<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span></span><![endif]><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'>"</span><em>The shores of the Ashley and Cooper Rivers at
Charleston were muddy and swampy— still are at the southern entrance of the
Inland Waterway. This swamp shore was called <u>plough mud [pronounced pluff]</u>
and the boys had to dig into the mud with their paddles and slide the bateaux
along to gain solid ground. Remember how terrible that mud smelled? And the
Intercoastal still does!</em><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'> " From the web site <a
href="http://www.duckworksmagazine.com/03/r/excerpts/bcsc/">www.duckworksmagazine.com/03/r/excerpts/bcsc/</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoListParagraph style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.75in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2'><![if !supportLists]><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>4.<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span></span><![endif]><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'>"</span><i><u><span style='color:black'>What’s 'plough mud'</span></u></i><i><span
style='color:black'>? you ask. I never knew what it was until one day when I
was driving down Calhoun Street in Bluffton. I was confronted with a new art
gallery that had <u>cleverly adopted the phonetic spelling 'Pluff Mud'</u> as
the name of its shop. Imagine that. Ten years in Bluffton and I didn’t know
what plough mud was! When Lowcountry natives write of the fragrance of the
marsh, they are describing the experience of plough mud. Todd Ballantine
describes the fragrance as 'essence d’estuary.' The mud is the build up of soil
washed off the land, detritus from marsh creatures, decayed marsh grass, and
sand transported in by the tides.</span></i><span style='font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>" From the web site <a
href="http://blufftonbreeze.com/201003/_Bluffton-Environmental.php">http://blufftonbreeze.com/201003/_Bluffton-Environmental.php</a>.
Note that Bluffton is further down the coast from Charleston, but is still in
the lowcountry area of South Carolina.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>The responses to my query
have convinced me that "pluff mud" is the older spelling, and that it
didn't get its name from plowing/ploughing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Here are some things I
learned:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoListParagraph style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:1.0in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1'><![if !supportLists]><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>1.<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span></span><![endif]><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'>Rudolph Troike pointed out that one can do a search in the <i>Dictionary
of American Regional English</i> at <a href="http://dare.wisc.edu/?q=search">http://dare.wisc.edu/?q=search</a>
(though I have a hard time making sense of the results).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoListParagraph style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:1.0in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1'><![if !supportLists]><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>2.<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span></span><![endif]><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'>The English word "plow/plough" was probably never
pronounced as "pluff."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoListParagraph style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:1.0in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1'><![if !supportLists]><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>3.<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span></span><![endif]><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'>One might get slightly different results searching with Bing
rather than Google. This way Dick Watson found a 2005 book entitled </span><i><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><a
href="http://www.amazon.com/Shamrocks-Pluff-Mud-Southern-Charleston/dp/1419613170/">Shamrocks
and Pluff Mud: A Glimpse of the Irish in the Southern City of Charleston, South
Carolina</a></span></i><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoListParagraph style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:1.0in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1'><![if !supportLists]><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>4.<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span></span><![endif]><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'>As Rikker Dockum demonstrated, "date restricting within
Google Books can help pinpoint when each spelling might have come into use."
He found more than 20 hits for the spelling "pluff mud" before 1900,
and the only spelling of "plough mud" that he found up to 1950 was one
book published in 1898 and republished a couple of times after that.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoListParagraph style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:1.0in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1'><![if !supportLists]><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>5.<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span></span><![endif]><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'>Pluff mud was used for growing rice, but probably wouldn't have
been used for other farming because of the salt content.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoListParagraph style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:1.0in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1'><![if !supportLists]><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>6.<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span></span><![endif]><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'>This term apparently had not previously gotten the attention of
the American Dialect Society, but Benjamin Barrett has passed it on to them now
and they are working on it. (I would be interested to know what they come up
with. I was once a member of the ADS, back in my school days, but no longer am.)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoListParagraph style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:1.0in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1'><![if !supportLists]><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>7.<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span></span><![endif]><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'>"Pluff" is a Scottish word, and Crockett points out
that it and "pluff mud" are documented in the <i>OED</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoListParagraph style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:1.0in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1'><![if !supportLists]><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>8.<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></span></span><![endif]><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'>As Richard Gravina pointed out, the <i>Dictionary of the Scots
Language</i> at <a href="http://www.dsl.ac.uk/dsl/">www.dsl.ac.uk/dsl/</a> has
an entry for "pluff" that says that the word can be "</span>applied
to anything of a dry, soft, crumbly or spongy texture which disintegrates
easily into dust, specif. a rotten mushroom (Sc. 1825 Jam.), a pear or the like
which looks edible but is rotten inside.<span style='font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>"<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>I still think the semantic
link is tenuous, but am convinced now that the term "pluff mud" does
not come from the English word "plow/plough," and that the spelling
"pluff mud" is older than "plough mud," and that it does
date back to a Scottish word meaning something like "puff." There
really isn't anything light, airy or puffy about pluff mud, and as Donald
Frantz and others have pointed out, there seems to be some kind of onomatapoeia
or sound symbolism going on.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>-- David Frank</span><o:p></o:p></p>
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