What was That Word?

OMG! Did you see where this is now an official word in the Oxford Dictionary? I sometimes have trouble understanding what all of the abbreviations and symbols used by the younger generation mean. I am glad to know that I will soon be able to look them up in the good old dictionary and it will be explained to me. A lot of them I don't even want to know.

Learning that bit of trivia was something you needed to know wasn't it. I got me to thinking about a lot of the other words or terms that we use. The term RED NECK has always amused me. I guess I had my head in the sand but I don't remember it much until Mr. Foxworthy started using it so much. Some of his ideas for a "redneck" are funny but in reality, some of them have a lot of truth to them. I wonder if Mr. Foxworthy knows where the word really origionated.

1. In the 1930's a group of miners in WV who wore red bandanas on their necks pressured the mine owners into letting them become unionized. That was one of the definitions that I came up with.

2. In the 1800's sharecroppers in Georgia and Alabama with sunburned necks were also called 'rednecks".

3. The term also used by the Scottish to refer to supporters from lower Scotland who fled to upper Ireland. These were called Lowland Presbyterians. They fled to Ireland during the persecution by the British Crown. they signed their names on documents using their own blood, and wore red cloth on their neck. They did not want Scotland to accept the rule of the Church of England but be under a Presbyterian form of Government. This earned them the name of "redneck".

4. Many of the settlers in the Southern States were Presbyterian so the term applied to them and there descendants. Maybe as the Comedians are always referring to these "Redneck Good ole' boys from ther South", they may have known the true answer all of the time.

Remember when Archie Bunker called Mike, his son-in-law, Meatheat. Do you know what this means? Me either, so I looked it up and learned a meathead is "dead from the neck up.".

I always wondered where the word Hoity-toity came from. I remember it in the movies when I was a girl, I thought it was a fun word. It actually is someone on a high horse, conceieted, know it all. Hey, it is also the name of a nail polish. You can learn something everyday.

In an E-mail; about Ponderings, I learned a few things too.

1. Do illiterate people get the full effect of Alphabet Soup?

2. I used to eat a lot of natural foods before I learned most people die of natural causes.

3. Finally: I am a nobody and Nobody is perfect...... Am I Perfect? What else must I say?

Have a good day and do your research.