Comment by kls | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kls | Hacker News Reader

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Your post reminded me of a story I have, I was the CTO for a company that exited to a Spanish owned company. When that happened we had a lot of Spaniards that would come over and work for a while.

Anyways somehow there became this competition among them to learn and use the most obscure American English colloquialisms and use them in meetings. One of them the CTO for Spain became a very good friend of mine and we decided to start teaching him some words so he could win in these competitions.

With that said I am from a rural town in the US southeast (Florida to be specific). Needless to say he learned a lot of obscure US country colloquialisms. I can still remember the look of wordsmithed defeat by the other executives when he declared, in a meeting, that they where carpetbagging hornswogglers for deciding something without him. I have to say I nearly fell out of my chair with laughter in seeing how impressed with himself he was. The meeting quickly devolved into defining what was a carpetbagger and what was being hornswoggled, as well as requests for other words in which my friend declared that they need to get their own US mentor and not steal his. I was all good fun.

I also learned some Spaniard ones. My favorite which I could not spell out here to save my life, was one that amounts to the equivalent of monkey business.

Speaking of Floridian, long ago, I worked with a developer from a rural area in that state. My favorites were, "Shittin' in high cotton!" when a program finally ran correctly and when the network connection finally came up, "We're swappin' spit now!" .

Heard and used it many times, an equivalent to high cotton would be "Eating high on the hog". Which comes from the higher cuts being the better cuts of pork.

My absolute favorite was the one my grandfather used to tell me, he would say "Boy if your gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough and you are, by far, the toughest kid I know" I love the back-handedness of the insult.

The other one that I think is funny is due to Tombstone most people think it is: "Im your huckleberry" when in fact the correct term is "I'll be your huckle bearer" which is the equivalent of a pall bearer, in the south we call the casket handles huckles. The term basically means keep it up and you are going to get the fight you are looking for.

I love this, it makes so much more sense now.

The other one he uses is "Your a daisy if you do", which may be rather apparent but it references another colloquialism of "pushing up daises" in other words being dead and therefore plant food. Both of which, at least in the south, pretty much mean that the person is done talking and are serious warnings, that they are done talking. I would assume that they where also used in the American west at a time given that a lot of Confederate Civil War soldiers went west after the war.

The movies use of them was actually well played as Holiday was from Georgia and would have shared many of the colloquialisms that where in use in the deep south of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, etc.

It's "huckleberry". The phrase is documented back to the 19th century and taken straight from the 1920s Tombstone historical novel.

I am not disputing the fact that, the movie, the script or novels state huckleberry, nor am I disputing that historically someone not from the south quoted Doc Holiday as saying it, what I am saying is that the term is still used today, as it was back then and in the South where Doc was from the term is "I'll be your huckle bearer". It was almost assuredly a misquote from a person not from the deep south. My great grandfather used to use the term and was a child during the late wild west era. This was why I said it was funny that Tombstone popularized it, because outside of the south people think it is huckleberry due to the fact that, that is what he said in the movie.

> the term is still used today

Not the term, a term. They're different idioms with completely different meanings, both well-attested historically. "Huckleberry" is not a corruption of "huckle bearer" here or anywhere else.

Doc Holliday isn't quoted as having ever said the phrase, by the way. It's taken from historical fiction, in a context where "I'm your huckleberry" -- "I'm game", "I'm up for it", "I'm your guy" -- makes far more sense.

"They say you're the gamest man in the Earp crowd, Doc," Ringo said. "I don't need but three feet to do my fighting. Here's my handkerchief. Take hold." Holliday took a quick step toward him. "I'm your huckleberry, Ringo," replied the cheerful doctor. "That's just my game."

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Tombstone/4PnFRfNtyhYC?...

Yes I understand that, but Burns was also one of the first to use huckleberry, before that it only showed up in one other historical writing (in which is is clear what Huckleberry is interpreted as) that does not predate his Tombstone work by much (about 30 years IIRC). I also know that there is no direct quote of someone saying Doc Holiday said this, but Burns interviewed Earp as well as a lot of the residents of Cochise County. I was simply stating that I don't dispute that someone in those interviews may have quoted Holiday as saying it as huckleberry, The point is it is too coincidental that a man from an area where an expression was and still is, used liberally is "fictionally" quotes as using a term that is almost identical to one that he would almost assuredly be familiar with and used. If it was quoted and Holiday did use it, it would have been huckle bearer. I am not disputing your point that the movie, the book both say huckleberry and I acknowledge that there may even have been someone from the era that quoted him as saying it as huckleberry.

> before that it only showed up in one other historical writing (in which is is clear what Huckleberry is interpreted as) that does not predate his Tombstone work by much (about 30 years IIRC)

This simply isn't true. It was a common phrase and is widely attested in texts from Holliday's lifetime.

You originally said:

> due to Tombstone most people think it is: "Im your huckleberry" when in fact the correct term is "I'll be your huckle bearer"

I'm not arguing that "huckle bearer" wasn't also a common phrase. It's just not the "correct term" here. There's no basis for the idea that "huckleberry" was either a misquote or a corruption of "huckle bearer". Both the immediate textual context of the novel and the broader historical evidence for the phrase clearly establish otherwise.

The cook in a pizza joint in small town West Virginia:

"Faster'n a pack o' dogs on a three-legged cat"

It's funny my wife is from West N Carolina, it's a totally different type of country slang in WV, Virgina, North Carolina and South Carolina. What is funny is they all think I have a country accent, because the old Florida accent is similar to a Texas draw and I think they all have one. The norther south is a totally different pronunciation and accent from the deep south. I can understand the Cajuns better than someone from WV or the western Carolina's. Then you get to Tennessee and it's like a blend of the deep south / Texas accent and the upper south.

The equivalent deep south colloquialism for that would be: faster than a raped ape. I don't exactly understand why apes are so fast when they are raped but apparently they are fast. The other one I hear, but not as much, is faster than a knife fight in a phone booth.

One of my other favorites that is tangentially related is:

Ya'll cover your ass faster than the new guy on D'block.

> My favorite which I could not spell out here

Ironic, considering the highly phonemic orthography of Castilian.

I know, I can take a stab at it but I don't know if it is correct so I would not want to steer anyone wrong on it but it was basically: "que esta tehe mehanies" the last two words are what I am not sure of, that is how they would sound but I am not sure if it is correct in written form.

I have heard something like that in Colombia. Un teje maneje (think sewing and handling). https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/spanish-english...

Yeah that is it, it was explained to me that it would be similar to our saying of: "What is this monkey business". Which would loosely translate to something like child play or a commotion.

You guys/gals/tweeps need to spend a month in "Cordoba Capital", Argentina. You'll hear one of the weirder, funniest, impossible to imitate dialects of spanish. Basically we adore them, but it's very far from what most "argentinean spanish" is, which is pretty distinctive itself amongst the latin american variants of spanish.

That's hilarious. It reminds me about the insults and alliterations they throw around on Letterkenny Problems.

https://youtu.be/Z0sq3T5fErQ

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