My Dad, who spent his youth playing baseball throughout the Mid Atlantic and the South, became a master curator of regional slang and local customs. As an athlete, “luck” was always a welcome thing, and he learned a zillion “lucky” superstitions. Pass a field, and see a white horse? — One must immediately lick their thumb, and imprint that into the fist of the other hand, officially “stamping” the horse sighting. A guarantee of good luck. He had lucky socks. No hats on the bed. Ohhhhhhh, NEVER a hat on the bed. And so on. Now I am the happy keeper of the superstitions, the phrases, the (forgive me) profane jokes, and the memories.

Thank you GA for a fascinating post on a treasured topic. Hurrah!

If you ever find yourself with nothing to do for a few hours (ha!), look up William Holloway’s ‘A General Dictionary of Provincialisms’ (1838), which is in the British Museum and available digitally on Google Books. It contains thousands of regional words that have fallen out of usage (and many that have not), and many of them are colourful and evocative. It also traces their origins.