Tag Archives: twang

Critter

Critter: (n) any creature.

Painful as it may seem, sometimes you just have to make a decision.

Neutrality may appear to be a safer ploy, but if you continue to insist that you can go one way or another, you usually end up going nowhere.

I will give you two examples of what I’m talking about.

The first one would be our selected word for the day—”critter.”

Although Webster insists it is synonymous—equal, if you will—to the word “creature,” you and I know it is not.

If I were sitting at a dinner with people of education, prominence and self-imposed superiority, and I were to utter the word “critter,” they would immediately assume that the conversation needed to be doled out in syllables of less than three.

Yes, I would be classified as a bumpkin.

I might be viewed as a hillbilly.

Considered quaint, but not cute.

And they would be afraid that I might break out into strains of Dixie, insisting that “the South will rise again.”

I don’t care what state you’re from (except maybe Mississippi). If your governor kept referring to creatures as critters, you might think it was a populist choice. But even if you were a small-town type person, you would be suspicious about trusting this individual to be in charge of the state treasury.

No, I don’t think you can say “critter” and not have all the accoutrements, sins, attributes and burdens of the Dixon part of the Mason cast upon you.

The same thing is true with the word “y’all.”

You can say, “All of you,” or “us together,” but the minute you say “y’all,” memories of moonshine and the Klan pop into the mind of your hearer, and you are cast among the ignorant.

I am not saying I agree with this, considering that I lived in the South for many years. But I have also traveled all over, and even though I grew up in Ohio, if I go to Wisconsin, they will insist I have a Southern accent.

It’s not because I have a drawl or a twang.

It is simply because sometimes I chat y’all up ‘bout ma’ critters.

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

 

Subscribe to Jonathan’s Weekly Podcast

Good News and Better News

 

Country and Western

Country and western: (n) another name for country music

When I was a pukey little kid filled with pimples and promise, we called it hillbilly music. It was another thing we were permitted to “be better than” in an environment where our white skin gave us free pass to nearly every privilege.

It was particularly humorous because I lived in a state of the Union in which the hillbillies who made that music were not more than a “state of mind away.”

I grew up with gospel music, which was hillbilly music sung on Sunday, including a Wurlitzer organ. I didn’t care. It was the gospel.funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

And the gospel, to me at that point, meant four-part singin’, clappin’ and words about my unworthiness but soon inexplicable admission to heavenly bliss.

After I escaped the educational system (when we both breathed a sigh of relief) I ended up in Nashville, Tennessee, surrounded by people who were not hillbillies, but just favored a twinge of “twang to their “thang.”

My opinion soon changed because they liked the music I was writing and offered me opportunities to record it, and even some open doors to perform it.

I never became a huge follower of country and western music, and to this day only enjoy it in small doses.

But the same could be said of Pepto-Bismol. Every once in a while, you need a little to calm your innards.


Donate Button

Subscribe to Jonathan’s Weekly Podcast

Good News and Better News