dialectal "from the home" referring to a woman's maiden name

[Cohen, Gerald Leonard]

  I'm sending this along without yet having checked DARE.

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  A student of mine was born in Kansas but married a man in Freeburg, Missouri, a town in Osage County, about 40 miles north of the University of Missouri-Rolla.

    She frequently hears statements of the type "She was a Welshmeyer from home," or "She was a Jones from home" and at first interpreted "home" here to be a place-name. She was surprised to hear of so many women coming from the town of Home.

    Then someone straightened her out.  "She was [e.g.] a Welshmeyer from home" meant "Her maiden name was Welshmeyer."

      Then there's the dialectal use of the phrase "right away" that she had to get used to. It means "whenever I get around to it."  So she was at first troubled when people in town would tell her that they'll do something right away, and she'd be waiting for them to do it right away, but then they acted as if there was no hurry at all. In time she was clued in..

Gerald Cohen
University of Missouri-Rolla