regional dialectics

[ilanarama]

A while back I came across a pointer to the Harvard Dialect Survey (preliminary results and maps are at http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~golder/dialect/maps.php) which is, I think, really cool. I mean, some people say "kitty-corner" and some people say "catty-corner" and some people say "kitty wampus" and isn't that just nifty? Well, I think so.

Backpacking this weekend with another couple. Hiking up a steep hill. I say to Britt and Kristen, "at that slippery spot back there I almost fell ass over teakettle."

They say, "Huh?"

Turns out they've never heard that expression. "Ass over end" is what both of them would say. They think I made it up, until Rolf caught up with us, and I say to him: "Complete this phrase: I almost fell ass over --?"

"Teakettle!" he calls out.

I felt vindicated. Turns out Britt and Kristen were both raised in the West (Colorado and North Dakota, respectively) and Rolf and I in the East (New Hampshire and Maryland, respectively). So that's something else for the dialect map.

What does your ass fall over?

Comments

[waider.livejournal.com]

I don't think we'd use that phrase. "arse over tit" is one I've heard, but I've not ever heard people use it a whole lot. The more pedestrian "head over heels" is more common, but tends to be mostly for metaphorical use - "head over heels in love" and all that. Perhaps shamefully, I don't have a handy Gaelic phrase to apply here.

[zadcat.livejournal.com]

I can't always distinguish between what I would say, and what I would say if I didn't read UK books, and so on. But: ass over tip, ass over teakettle. Either one. Teakettle is funnier.

[wisn.livejournal.com]

Can't honestly say as I know. The household I grew up in with wouldn't allow the word "ass".

"Ass over teakettle" sounds the most familiar.

[ilanarama.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm so accustomed to writing and reading arse that ass looks funny to me.

And I almost said, "ass over pigtails" and have no idea if that's a coinage or a real phrase I heard somewhere.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

I would like to submit my vote for "arse over tits" as well, but only because i've encountered it often in books. I don't have an "X over Y" expression that i use with any sort of regularity, nor is there anything similar in Spanish that i can think of (maybe "pies sobre cabeza", but again, i don't use that).

[alembicresearch.livejournal.com]

From:

www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19960517

Julie Alix Robichaux writes:
I wanna know about "ass over teakettle."
Ass over teakettle is one of many variants of an expression meaning 'head over heels; topsy-turvy; in confusion'. The usual British version is ass over tip (or tit), which occurs in James Joyce's Ulysses, among other works. This form also occurs in America. For instance, in The Grapes of Wrath Steinbeck has a character say "You jus' scrabblin' ass over tit, fear somebody gonna pin some blame on you."

The earliest known example of the phrase is in an 1899 book about Virginia folk exressions, which defines "ass over head" as "Head over heels; topsy-turvy." (Note that "ass over head" is a logical expression for a messed-up situation, as opposed to "head over heels," which would seem to be the natural order of things.) However, there must have been many different variants even at that time: a 1943 book about Indiana dialect in the 1890s lists "ass over appetite," "ass over applecart," and "ass over endways." The common "teakettle" variation is first found in a 1946 book about fighter pilots in WWII, in a euphemized form: "He displayed a rump-over-tea-kettle aggressiveness in seeking dog-fights."

Other objects include tin cups, teacups, and elbow.

New Jersey is heard from...

[tigresse.livejournal.com]

Definitely "ass over teakettle".

"Kitty-" or "Catty-corner" is a direction. "Catty-wampus" is a term I've only heard one person use and he used it to mean "out of balance".

Cali says:

[nicebutnubbly.livejournal.com]

Ass over teakettle, definitely.

[nothings.livejournal.com]

Most useless maps ever. They need to be normalized by the number of samples per state or something.

tit.

[sambushell.livejournal.com]

tit.

"catty-wumpus"

[littleamerica.livejournal.com]

A couple of years ago I heard a woman who grew up somewhere in Texas use "catty-wumpus" as a synonym for "lopsided." I grew up in Central Virginia, and I was passingly familiar with the word, but I had only heard my father use it, and he only ironically.

And like wisn, I grew up thinking an "ass" was an animal, and it was stubborn, but didn't fall over anything.

[ilanarama.livejournal.com]

Woo! Thanks for that bit of research.

"Ass over applecart" is so nicely euphonious I think I'll have to start using it.

Re: New Jersey is heard from...

[ilanarama.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think of "catty-wampus" as meaning "cockeyed", but it was on this Harvard Dialect Survey as being something that (some) people answered for their term for "diagonally across from".

I'm not surprised we share the same dialect, though, because we grew up in more or less the same area (mid-Atlantic).

Re: "catty-wumpus"

[ilanarama.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've never used or heard of "catty-wampus" to mean "diagonally across from" but apparently some people do.

I know it as meaning lopsided, though. Not a word I'd use, but one I'd recognize.

I grew up thinking an "ass" was an animal

And this gives me an excuse to quote my favorite asinine limerick:

There was a young lass from Madras
Who had a remarkable ass:
Not rounded and pink
As you probably think --
It was grey, had long ears, and ate grass.