wag

[Wilson Gray]

On Nov 18, 2004, at 2:30 AM, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET>
> Subject:      Re: wag
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> MW3 shows this "wag" (v.t. [1b]) = "dialect: to carry or haul with
> difficulty : LUG <wag groceries home in a cart>

My grandmother died before the use of grocery carts had penetrated into
the piney woods of ETx. I wonder whether she would have continued to
use "wag" to describe the action.

>  <a small child ... compelled to wag her baby brother around with her
> -- Theodore Garrison>

The above is a perfect example of the way that this word is used in ETx.

>
> Manly Wade Wellman, _The Lost and the Lurking_ (1981), p. 72: <<"...
> You
> just let me wag your stuff back here. ....">>. Speaker is a black man

So, in some parts of the country, "wag" *is* used by male speakers. I
was wondering about that.

>  in the boonies of the eastern Appalachians, I reckon maybe in NC.
> [Wellman's
> fiction set in Appalachia is full of such things: "air" for "any",
> never
> "might" but always "might could", etc., etc.]

I'm familiar with Manly Wade through his writings in the Magazine of
Fantasy & Science-Fiction way back when. Unfortunately, we never
bonded.

-Wilson Gray

>
> -- Doug Wilson
>