Cattywampus:
adj. word used by older white Southerners to mean something's all jumbled up.
All Jumbled Up:
colloquial euphemism: phrase used by Black people as a substitute for "all fucked up". Typically this substitution will take place in more formal speech, mixed-race spaces, or when it otherwise is not clear that "fucked up" wouldn't be misconstrued as communicating an emphatic anger which has not been posited by the speaker. There are no regional restrictions on it's use. See also "messed up".
Ok, I'm not 100% on either of the definitions above. I just woke up this morning and my mind was blank except for the word "cattywampus". Cattywampus??!?!?!?!?! Who the fuck says "cattywampus"? So, the first 10 waking moments of my morning were trying to figure out where I would have picked up this gem of a word that I would never say; at least not if I'd been exercising good judgement and using forethought.
I believe that a professor used the word in class once last year. And... that's about it. I have no relationship to this word in my life. And yet, there it was- all laid back and reclining all over my brain this morning.
I remember taking a psychology class back in high school and learning about the competing theories that try to explain why we dream. One of the theories was that we take in so much information during our waking hours that our brains simply cannot process all of it; particularly if they are strapped with the tasks of helping us to navigate all of the requirements of our waking hours. So, sleep is like a defrag where your brain cleans out all of these half-started, incomplete, free-floating and unrelated to anything thoughts. The residue of this process is what we experience as dreams. Certainly there is more to the argument and explanation, but for purposes of blog-contextualization this will suffice.
So, maybe that's where cattywampus came from. I've certainly never said the word myself. But, here's where that leads me today- in my waking/conscious moments:
If I'm so backlogged that after a few weeks of getting by on brain-power cruise control, my brain is just now getting to an intriguing word that someone said in passing on their way to a larger point that I ultimately agreed with from Fall 2007, Laaawwwd Hammercy Jesus! I must be really intellectually constipated. Like, "Ok ma'am. It looks like we need to set you up for the premium package, which consists of an emergency enema and a series of 9 colonics. Okay? And then we'll see how things look next week."
adj. word used by older white Southerners to mean something's all jumbled up.
All Jumbled Up:
colloquial euphemism: phrase used by Black people as a substitute for "all fucked up". Typically this substitution will take place in more formal speech, mixed-race spaces, or when it otherwise is not clear that "fucked up" wouldn't be misconstrued as communicating an emphatic anger which has not been posited by the speaker. There are no regional restrictions on it's use. See also "messed up".
Ok, I'm not 100% on either of the definitions above. I just woke up this morning and my mind was blank except for the word "cattywampus". Cattywampus??!?!?!?!?! Who the fuck says "cattywampus"? So, the first 10 waking moments of my morning were trying to figure out where I would have picked up this gem of a word that I would never say; at least not if I'd been exercising good judgement and using forethought.
I believe that a professor used the word in class once last year. And... that's about it. I have no relationship to this word in my life. And yet, there it was- all laid back and reclining all over my brain this morning.
I remember taking a psychology class back in high school and learning about the competing theories that try to explain why we dream. One of the theories was that we take in so much information during our waking hours that our brains simply cannot process all of it; particularly if they are strapped with the tasks of helping us to navigate all of the requirements of our waking hours. So, sleep is like a defrag where your brain cleans out all of these half-started, incomplete, free-floating and unrelated to anything thoughts. The residue of this process is what we experience as dreams. Certainly there is more to the argument and explanation, but for purposes of blog-contextualization this will suffice.
So, maybe that's where cattywampus came from. I've certainly never said the word myself. But, here's where that leads me today- in my waking/conscious moments:
If I'm so backlogged that after a few weeks of getting by on brain-power cruise control, my brain is just now getting to an intriguing word that someone said in passing on their way to a larger point that I ultimately agreed with from Fall 2007, Laaawwwd Hammercy Jesus! I must be really intellectually constipated. Like, "Ok ma'am. It looks like we need to set you up for the premium package, which consists of an emergency enema and a series of 9 colonics. Okay? And then we'll see how things look next week."
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