Re: [Harp-L] Another man done goneZombor writes:



I have often chased up the meanings of obscure American-isms. Don't know how many times I've asked a US national about the word 'boondock'.
None of them could get beyond "Hey, it means like, you know, out there in the sticks...the boondocks...." 
So I looked in some dictionaries; it's from the Phillipino Tagalog  word, 'bundok' which means 'mountain'. The  US occupied the Phillipines following the war there in 1899, and  the
word seems to have travelled back with the servicemen. Obviously the meaning has been bent somewhat, but the connection is clear enough.
Took me quite a while to work out the meaning of 'kitty (or 'catty') corner' too: diagonally opposite, is what it means....yes?
Howsabout: "You better 'stay out of black bottoms, they got your bathwaters on" ????? Black bottoms I worked out that one a long time ago, but 'bathwater'??
The 'bathwater' image comes up quite a bit in country and blues. I asked an expat US muso here (the late lamented steel man, Pete Linden) about it.
He said, after a bit of thought, that he thought it related to the days when people had to stoke up the fire to heat up their bathwater. So it appears it just means
'to get heated up', thus, ready for a fight etc.Funny how 
What about 'Kokomo'? Still don't have an answer for that one, and it comes up quite a lot in American song:
"No particular place to go, so we parked way out on the Kokomo"....from C.E.Berry....'Kokomo Arnold'.....is it a place?  a state of mind?"  ....anyone?
I could go on, cobbers, but I'll call it quits for now,
RD

>>> "John F. Potts" <hvyj@xxxxxxx> 30/10/2010 10:47 >>>
Zombor writes:
If it was "another man has gone" I would understand. But what is  
"done gone"? Is it some american expression?

It's African-American vernacular sometimes referred to as "ebonics."   
Because of the cultural and geographic origins of blues music  (post  
emancipation but pre-integration U.S.) African-American and rural  
U.S. Southern-American vernacular and idiomatic expressions are  
common in blues lyrics. Most  American born English speakers have  
sufficient  exposure to African-American vernacular that they are  
able to understand the slang expressions used in blues lyrics without  
difficulty, but non-American English speakers or those for whom  
English is a second language may find it more difficult to understand  
such phrases and vocabulary in proper context.

JP





This archive was generated by a fusion of Pipermail 0.09 (Mailman edition) and MHonArc 2.6.8.