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An Earful of Arkanspeak: Like Chasin’ Whiffle-Bird : Folkways: The President-elect, a man who has been to Memphis, can still slip into lexicon of rural roots.

TIMES STAFF WRITER

President-elect Bill Clinton, son of Georgetown and Oxford, is no hick. But every once in a while he lets fly with an expression that comes straight from his small-town Arkansas roots.

Appearing on Arsenio Hall’s late-night talk show back in June, the Arkansas governor was asked by the ultra-hip host to list his shortcomings. Clinton said they’d have to hold a “bunking party” to allow him time to detail them all. That’s what they call a slumber party or sleep-over down in Arkansas.

Over the years, the state that calls itself the Land of Opportunity has given us J. William Fulbright, Wal-Mart and maybe enough chicken parts to cover greater Fresno to a depth of eight feet. But the state has also contributed a wealth of colorful words and phrases to the American language.

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You have to come from Arkansas, or prit’ near, to know what a “woodscolt” is, or what “another white belly up” means or what goes on at the “feddle coat house.” As the Clinton crowd descends on Washington, such terms are likely to come with them, so it might be useful to take a first cut at an Arkansas lexicon, lest we find our bread ain’t done and we end up chasin’ the whiffle-bird.

While linguists find it impossible to pinpoint the exact geographic origins of all the words and phrases, Arkansas has benefited from the confluence of three migration patterns that have lent both distinctiveness and unusual variety to its speech.

The northern part of the state is peopled by the rough and independent Ozark Mountain folk, whose language is a veritable Galapagos of unique and archaic expressions. The southeastern section of Arkansas is known as the Delta, running alongside the Mississippi River and sharing in the dialect of the Deep South. And the people of the southwestern corner of the state, radiating north and east from Texarkana and including Clinton’s home town of Hope, have more in common linguistically with neighboring East Texas and Oklahoma than with Pine Bluff.

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Arkansawyers (many residents object to “Arkansans” as sounding too much like “Kansans”) from, say, Fayetteville in the northwest corner of the state can easily spot a Delta accent. Ozark folk are barely intelligible to residents of metropolitan Little Rock.

And Bill Clinton, who didn’t ride into town on a load of pumpkins, well, he moves around a lot, one day sounding like an East Coast egghead, another day like a tout at the Hot Springs racetrack so beloved by his mother.

Richard Allin, a columnist at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and the state’s unofficial lexicographer, has spent years compiling the unique words, phrases and pronunciations he has heard in his coverage of the Arkansas Legislature and his travels around the state. While few of the entries in his “Southern Legislative Dictionary” are unique to Arkansas, most are rarely heard outside the South.

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Another great source of Arkansas linguistic lore is “Down in the Holler, A Gallery of Ozark Folk Speech,” by Vance Randolph.

Herewith is a sampler from the two collections. Keep them handy in case Clinton decides to go down home in his inaugural address.

About half preacher --publicly pious, superficially holy, as in “Don’t take a drink around him, he’s about half preacher.”

Sparr --a small bird, as in “not a sparr falls . . . “

Been to Memphis --said of a man or woman of the world, seen it all.

Clean on to Memphis --all the way, as in “She was setting in such a way as you couldn’t help seeing clean on to Memphis.”

His bread ain’t done --not quite with it, a few ants shy of a picnic.

Arkansas credit card-- a length of hose used as a siphon.

He would argue with a milepost --stupid and quarrelsome.

Bird nest on the ground --a cushy job.

Chalk air center --where parents leave their children when they go to work.

Feddle coat house --where the U.S. attorney tries cases.

He don’t know pea turkey --absolutely ignorant.

He learned to whisper in a saw mill --said of someone easily overhead.

Like driving a swarm of bees through a snowstorm with a switch --confusing, futile.

Little but loud --Ross Perot.

He lives so far out in the country he has to walk towards town to hunt --said of a real backwoodsman.

Clean his plow --To thrash somebody, same as “clean his clock” elsewhere.

Dido --mischief or a rowdy prank. Kids who act up are said to be “cutting didos.”

Puke --a citizen of Missouri.

Seeing double and feeling single --drunk and randy.

So bucktoothed he could eat an apple through a keyhole-- needing orthodontia.

Her baby was so ugly she had to borrow one to take to town.

He won’t lie, but he’ll bend hell out of the truth --a typical politician.

Another white belly up --another job done, from the way a snake dies.

His eyes popped out like a stomped on - toad frog --flabbergasted.

Okra --manhood, as in “Look at Sam, a-struttin’ his okra for them town gals.”

White-livered --applied to woman, means lascivious, as in a “white-livered widder.”

Woodscolt --a child born out of wedlock. Such a child is also said to have been conceived “on the wrong side of the blanket,” meaning in a hurried union.

Whiffle-bird --a wholly fictional creature, a chimera.

Randolph notes that Ozarkers are also extraordinarily prudish in their speech, which is rich in euphemism and circumlocution. Pregnancy is seldom mentioned in mixed company. In all male company, a hill man may say his wife is catched or springin’ or sprung or too big for her clothes or comin’ fresh or that she has swallered a watermelon seed.

Another common term for pregnant is up and comin’; a woman who has borne many children is often called the up and cominest woman in the county.

Ozark language is also rich in self-explanatory and highly visual similes. Among those complied by Randolph are:

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Scarce as snake’s feathers.

Red as a gobbler’s snout in spring.

White as the inside of a toadstool.

Pretty as a new-laid egg.

Proud as a peafowl with two tails.

Stinks worse’n a buzzard roost.

Happy as a dead pig in the sunshine.

Calm as a hog on ice.

Empty as a dead man’s eyes.

Too dead to skin --beyond worth for food, as in the overheard remark after a lopsided election in Benton County, Ark., earlier this century: “The Republican Party is too dead to skin.”

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