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I was reading the inside cover of Country Ghetto and JJ said " I grew up in the "Root Hog or Die" days. Can someone please translate that into Northern talk? I have no clue what that is all about, but if JJ felt compeled to write about it on the CD liner it must have some cultural relevence. Please exlain, I'd like to know.
once again, correct me if I am wrong, but I think it's an expression used in the South that means that you must look out for yourself as no one's going to do it for you..living off the land, not depending on others to survive......... ---------- "If you've never seen us before, don't be bashful - sing along from start to finish........and dance & feel good.....there's enough shit in the world, let it all out...........Brighter Daaaaays...."
root hog or die: do the necessary work or suffer the consequences
This is one of several expressions introduced by Davy Crockett, who wrote in his autobiography, "We were therefore determined to go on the old saying, root hog or die." This adage was probably already well-known to people living in the frontier areas of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio before Crockett made it familiar to a wider audience. Western frontiersmen were often in dire economic straits and had to root around for whatever they needed to survive.
In early settlement days, hogs were commonly let loose to forage for themselves rather than being fed. Those who raised both pigs and corn sometimes turned the hogs loose in the cornfield to eat their way through the unharvested corn, a practice known as hogging down a cornfield. This system of feeding did away with the labor of harvesting and processing the corn before it went to the hogs anyway. Hogs were also sent out into the stubble of harvested fields to chew it down. Rooting for food among the stubble was much harder work for the pigs than chewing their way through full cornfields and seems more in keeping with the basic meaning of root hog or die -- work or starve.
Although the phrase has become less common since the late twentieth century, it still appears occasionally in print, usually as a self-conscious regionalism. Root-hog-or-die is sometimes used as an adjective, for example in this sentence from the Toronto Globe and Mail for June 9, 1976: "Many of that generation . . . no longer put up with that root-hog-or-die kind of motivation."
From www.vintage-vocabulary.com/roothog.html
---------- MofroFan1
Last Edited by on Jul 28, 2009 4:42 PM
ya hadda up one up on me..... didn't cha hair top!!!
:O) ---------- "If you've never seen us before, don't be bashful - sing along from start to finish........and dance & feel good.....there's enough shit in the world, let it all out...........Brighter Daaaaays...."
Last Edited by on Jul 28, 2009 4:58 PM
:o) ---------- "If you've never seen us before, don't be bashful - sing along from start to finish........and dance & feel good.....there's enough shit in the world, let it all out...........Brighter Daaaaays...."
Thanks, mofrofans1, I get it. Thank you for taking the time to fully explain it to me. Interesting, I'm glad I asked.
Not many kids are raised that way today. Most are Mall Rats who don't really need what they are buying, almost certainly don't deserve it, will most likely waste it, then want more.
rasing kids today is hard, iffin your gonna do it right. Sometimes I feel almost guilty for not buying my 2 boys a playstation or some other gaming device - cuz awl the other kids have had them and upgraded them for years. Heck, I told my boys if they want one, save your money and my eldest finally broke down last year and forked out $130 of his own money for one of those hand held DS things and I am proud to say that he contemplated it because it was so much money. ---------- "If you've never seen us before, don't be bashful - sing along from start to finish........and dance & feel good.....there's enough shit in the world, let it all out...........Brighter Daaaaays...."
Maybe it's because I'm a yankee or it could be that it's a regional collquialism of days gone by, but I had never heard this phrase before. Thanks for the education! I love learning new vernacular expressions.
Though I do have to admit, the first thing I thought of when I saw this thread title was....... "I bet you can squeal like a pig. Weeeeeeee!" ---------- Well Behaved Women Rarely Make History
Last Edited by on Jul 29, 2009 5:46 PM
:o) ---------- "If you've never seen us before, don't be bashful - sing along from start to finish........and dance & feel good.....there's enough shit in the world, let it all out...........Brighter Daaaaays...."
