Translation Tuesday: Buggy

Crazy month, so another quick entry, after all, it is Translation Tuesday! This is another one that came up last week with my grad staff as we were training. I love that they are from all over the US, it is such fun watching them discover the South! Actually, I just submitted a program proposal for conference in March discussion culture shock,  this blog will come in very handy if it is accepted (granted, the proposal is grounded in theory and research, this blog… not so much!)

So today we are going to talk about the Southern word: Buggy. This is another word that popped up during my sophomore year of college. Actually, now that I think about it, I learned a lot of Southern things that year and I think that is because I had two suitemates from the deep South, these words came up a lot! You see, I think buggy and I think of something that goes behind a horse and is pulled. You sit in it and take a ride behind an elegant animal… I guess it is the whole idea of a “horse and buggy,” isn’t there a song with that in it? But no, that is not what a buggy is here in the South… a buggy is a cart, as in a grocery cart. It is odd,       I am only eight or nine hours from the place I grew up, but something so simple has a completely different meaning.

I still refuse to call it a buggy, it is a cart or grocery cart to me. But there has been at least one convert to the name from the Fort. Gail, that college roomie who grew up in the same hometown as me, converted. She refers to it as a buggy all the time… she won’t use the word y’all, but buggy works perfectly.