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Wade:

I was just reading a survey of how words/phrases are different across the United States.

One of the questions: What do you call it when rain falls while the sun is shining?

Choice A: I have no term for this.
Choice B: sun shower
Choice C: The devil is beating his wife.
Choice D: other.

Most of the USA chose A while a small part in the Northeast/Great Lakes area chose B.
The only place Choice C was found was in Alabama and Mississippi. Have you heard that expression? That seems really strange.

Here's the survey:

http://www.businessinsider.com/22-maps- ... errible-19" target="_blank

BTW: The survey was done by a prof at North Carolina State

Jeff "Love those words" Benedict

Well, one thing's for sure... you guys* all talk funny.



*That is, everyone from somewhere other than where I'm from. All 22 of those maps were spot on.

The Big Ben wrote: Choice C: The devil is beating his wife.

I heard this often in Texas while growing up. But my wife who grew up in South Africa refers to it as a "monkey's wedding". Lots more info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshower

Thanks, Wade. Interesting stuff, this language.

Didn't G.B. Shaw say that the English and the Americans are peoples separated by a common language? So the U.S. itself.

The real test is who knows the word tump?

Mark wrote:The real test is who knows the word tump?

Haven't heard that word for years. Heard it plenty when I lived in Arkansas.

I had never heard of the phrase "mid-south" until I drove through Tennessee for the first time when I was 26 years old.

the elephant wrote:

Mark wrote:The real test is who knows the word tump?

Everyone back home uses that word. It is quite common. It is used here, too.

Again, back home means South Texas, and here means central Mississippi.

I'm from Texas also. When I moved to Seattle I got a lot of strange looks when I said tump.

[/quote]

I'm from Texas also. When I moved to Seattle I got a lot of strange looks when I said tump.[/quote]
Okay, I'll bite: what is "tump"?

Here's some more info:

Using the link from Uncle Beer's post:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshower" target="_blank

"In the United States, particularly in the Southern United States, and in Hungary as well, a sunshower is said to show that "the devil is beating his wife" because he is angry God created a beautiful day. The rain is said to be his wife's tears. A regional variant from Tennessee is "the devil is kissing his wife".[4][5] In French, the phrase is "Le diable bat sa femme et marie sa fille"[6] (i.e., "the devil is beating his wife and marrying his daughter"). In the Netherlands they say that there is a "funfair going on in hell". [7]"

So, I guess the phrase is linked to the old good vs. evil thing.

Well, ok, maybe what I've heard as "take a dump" was actually "take a tump?" Or am I connecting two disparate thingys?

Yes, please disconnect them right away.

bloke wrote:"tump" is to disturb something that wasn't meant to be disturbed:

ex: "Who tumped over my watering can !?!?"

As opposed to tip which only applies to cows.

It's a sun shower, duh!

Wade, you sure it wasn't "gol'durned minute"?
I'd pity my potential kids for the odd phrases they'd hear, but I'd pity myself more for having them (kids)!

My mother, from rural Georgia, was often guilty of "fixin' to...". Another one that always bugged me as a kid was that if I was playing too rough, my mother would tell me I was going to "ruin" something (furniture, clothing, whatever).

Except that it was not pronounced "ruin" but more like "rurn" (rhymes with burn).

When I was a kid, that phrase always had an "a" in front. As in "I'm a fixin to go to the store." Or "It's a fixin to come up a cloud."

Al, I thought it was I'm'a whatever?

bloke wrote:THE FUNNIEST thing to hear is some dopehead or dopeheadress in a movie or TV show "doing" a "southern" accent.

Joe watches TV???

Down here it's "What is this strange liquid falling from the sky? Mine eyes are not accustomed to such a sight!" . . . or something in Spanish. Probably something in Spanish.