Smoky mountain voices
Subtitle: a lexicon of southern Appalachian speech based on the research of Horace Kephart
By: Harold Farwell, Jr. & J. Karl Nicholas, editors.
Contributors: Kephart, Horace, 1862-1931.; Farwell, Harold F., 1934-; Nicholas, J. Karl 1939-
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 1993
Place of publication: Lexington
Language: eng
Number of pages: 191
Subjects: English language -- Dialects -- Appalachian Region, Southern -- Glossaries, vocabularies, etc.; English language -- Dialects -- Great Smoky Mountains (N.C. and Tenn.) -- Glossaries, vocabularies, etc.; Popular culture -- Appalachian Region, Southern -- Dictionaries.; Popular culture -- Great Smoky Mountains (N.C. and Tenn.) -- Dictionaries.; English language -- Spoken English -- Great Smoky Mountains (N.C. and Tenn.); English language -- Spoken English -- Appalachian Region, Southern.; Americanisms -- Great Smoky Mountains (N.C. and Tenn.) -- Dictionaries.; Americanisms -- Appalachian Region, Southern -- Dictionaries.; Figures of speech.; Great Smoky Mountains (N.C. and Tenn.) -- Languages -- Dictionaries.; Appalachian Region, Southern -- Languages -- Dictionaries.
Description: A stingy man "won't drink branch water till there's a flood," and it is "a mighty triflin' sort o' man'd let either his dog or his woman starve." Some places are "so crowded you couldn't cuss a cat without gettin' fur in your mouth." For almost thirty years Horace Kephart collected sayings like these from his neighbors and friends in the area around Bryson City, North Carolina.

Smoky Mountain Voices is a dictionary of Southern Appalachian speech based on Kephart's journals and publications; it is also a compendium of mountain lore. Harold Farwell and J. Karl Nicholas have compiled not only quaint and peculiar words, but jokes and comic exchanges. Many of the "ordinary" words that comprised an important part of the language of the mountaineers are preserved here thanks to Kephart's meticulous collecting.

Smoky Mountain Voices will be of interest to dialectologists, historians of American English, students of regional literature, scholars of folk life, and lay-persons interested in Southern Appalachia.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 187-191).