"I've been meaning to axe you, how in tarnation do you walk in dem shoes, darlin'?"
Southern boys? What is tarnation?
said...
HOW IN TARNATION IS YR B-DAY, BIG GUY?!?!?!
said...
Leave it to the English nerd to fill you in. Tarnation is a a way of saying "hell" It comes most likely from "eternal damnation", but with most Southerners being Baptist this was a form of blasphemy. So, "eternal damnation" became "eternal darnation". That was then clipped over time to form the "tarnation" you see and hear today. Word formation is fun. I waste easily 20 minutes a day reading about words in the Oxford English Dictionary or OED to people in the clique.
annie said...
do you want to have fun with word formation, rochester? ok, you have until saturday to figure out what this means:
fwen ij fmeets ha dis fweetend fone chuff fwe fwill der is talt about yoopie. ite, for edchample, ha fwent yoopie in ha ponts fwinow.
and you can't ask matt, that's cheating.