POTE-niss thang!

[Wilson Gray]

"POTE-niss" : What is it?

        That's approximately the way it's always sounded to my ear, since I
was a child in East Texas, back in the late 'Thirties. Are any other
Southerners or Texans out there who are familiar with this? It occurs
in the 1938 novel, Journeyman, by Erskine Caldwell, who wrote it as
"potentest": "He's the potentest thing!" It means, "He's the, e.g.
cutest/sweetest/nicest thing!" for any Yankees who may read this. It's
not in DARE and Google finds only Caldwell.

-Wilson