Regional Term Pitch-In

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

Hi, who’s this?

I am Sabrina Furby. I’m calling from Indianapolis, Indiana.

Hi, Sabrina. Welcome to the program.

Hi.

You got a question for us?

Yes. My question or word is the term pitch in.

And I heard it in school.

They said since we weren’t having a test the next week, we were going to have a pitch in.

And I had no idea what that is.

And I said, what is that?

And everyone laughed at me.

And I’m originally from Seattle, Washington.

They said it’s probably a southern thing, but I have family in the south and nobody’s ever heard of it there either.

So what is a pitch in?

What it turned out to be is like a potluck where everybody pitches in to help out, like bring food.

But I have friends that were born and raised in Ohio, which is less than two hours away, and they have never heard it either.

This is perfect.

It is perfect.

Isn’t it perfect?

It is perfect.

It’s perfect.

It’s absolutely perfect.

I am so excited about this, Sabrina, because you are just a textbook case.

Literally.

Literally.

I’m looking at the Dictionary of American Regional English.

There’s a big entry for pitch-in dinner.

And there’s a map of the United States that shows where you usually hear this expression.

And it’s completely blank except for Indiana.

And Indiana has got all these little dots in it where the pitch-in dinner.

So pitch-in as a potluck is exclusive to Indiana?

More or less?

Pretty much.

Little pockets of outside, but the density of the response is in Indiana.

Yes, it’s beautiful.

It’s just this beautiful blank map except for Indiana, which is all filled in.

It’s just so exciting to me.

So to interpret this, in other words, Sabrina, you’ve come across a feature of the local dialect that is very local.

It’s so incredibly specific to that area.

It’d be a way to identify people if you were to interview them and wanted to figure out where they were from.

You say, what do you call it when a lot of people bring different food to a party together?

And if they said pitch, and you’re like, that’s a 90% chance that you were born in Indiana.

That makes me feel so much better.

Yay.

Well, bon appetit.

Get out and travel.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah, or just sit around and read dictionaries all day.

Well, Sabrina, thank you so much for calling.

You made my day.

All right.

Well, thank you so much for answering my question.

All right.

Cheers.

Okay.

Take care.

All right.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Call us. We’ve got answers to your language questions, 877-929-9673, or send us email to words@waywordradio.org.

Grant, we got an email from Deborah Daspit, who said that our show has inspired her to collect a lot of the old expressions that her Cajun grandparents used to use.

And she noted that most of them have to do with nature.

And some of them we’d know, like, fine as frog’s fur.

You know, how you doing?

I’m fine as frog’s fur.

But one that I didn’t know from before is the expression peach out of reach.

Is this a woman you can’t have?

Yeah, yeah.

It’s anything lovely that you want but you can’t have for some reason or another.

Isn’t that great?

A peach out of reach.

I do use peach.

If there’s a woman who is just a great all-around person, I call her a peach.

You’re married.

She’s out of reach.

But you can reach us anytime by calling us 877-929-9673 or send an email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

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