OnlineBookClub.org

It's a Southern term, but doesn't have to be used by hillbillies in overalls. I remember my grandmother saying variations of it.

OK, you don't HAVE to wear overalls, but it would certainly help. If I would read a New York gangster using that term, I would cease to believe in the character. How about an Italian romeo jumping up exclaiming, “Dag Namit!” The very thought makes me laugh. Stereotyping a character is much of what literature does. In that context, I suppose all readers and writers are bigots. If I were developing a character who used that kind of language, it would be someone who was close to the land, prone to curse, and probably wore his baseball cap, backwards. May God help me! .

Well said DennisK. As the gangster would say, "Fuggedabodit."

Somehow the Southern phrases seem like something outsiders never understand, while NY slang expressions make sense.

Or is it just me?

bookowlie wrote:Somehow the Southern phrases seem like something outsiders never understand, while NY slang expressions make sense.

Or is it just me?

I don't know about that, as I would have never guessed what "grinder" meant.

"Grinder" is not used in NY at all...it's a New England term. Although it's still the Northeast, New Englanders have their own unique expressions and culture.

A complaint of mine - never more than in the computer realm: Mouse, worm, etc... It's like we ran out of words; so we have to reuse the ones we already have. Why can't we just makeup a new word for those things that are new? Dennis K

We can't just make up new words because in psychology, schizophrenics who make up "new" words are insane and these words are called "neologisms". I'm assuming there are other criteria for making up new words. Perhaps someone else, or a lot of people heard that and now they are paranoid. Someone's gotta do it, though!

As to "Dad Blame!" - this book is the only place I've ever heard the expression. I've come across "Dag nab it!" which I think means about the same thing, but could also be interpreted as "Someone referred to as Dag ought to take/steal something"

Makes me think of the movie when Brad Pitt (Mickey) asks "DJew like dags?" Of course, everyone likes dogs.