Hooray
for Word Nerd Wednesday! It’s back this week, and as I debated what topic to
cover, I remembered that last week, Utahns celebrated a somewhat Mormon holiday: Pioneer Day.
It’s
marks the day when the first Mormon pioneers first entered the Salt Lake
Valley back in 1847.
Except that we tend to gloss over the fact that the first pioneers
actually arrived two days earlier, and that the 24th is when
Brigham Young first showed up. By
then, men were already plowing fields and building shelters.
The
24th was the day that Brigham, who was very ill, was driven in a wagon. It was backed up to the valley so he could raise himself up on his elbow. He’d
seen the valley in a vision, so when he looked out, he confirmed, “This is the
right place. Drive on.”
The
real story is a bit contrary to the image we tend to have of him standing
there, pounding his walking stick into the ground and declaring (as the park is
named), “This is the place.”
(Adding the word right sort of messes with the rhythm of the phrase anyway, right?)
(And the fact that dozens of people were already there, making it their home,
sort of showed that they knew they’d arrived in the right place, but still…)
Hey, he was their leader, so he got to pick the date for the holiday.
On
Pioneer Day, Salt Lake City puts on a huge parade, but few people get off work
(my husband is one of the lucky ones). In honor of the day (I’m not quite a
week late; give me a break), I thought I’d list some words and phrases for WNW that tend to be
Mormon-isms and, to a lesser extent, Utah-isms.
My
fellow Utah and/or Mormon readers (and friends of Utahns and Mormons) are
welcome to add more to the comments!
Deseret
You’ll
find this word all over Utah, particularly in names of businesses, and you’ll
find it in the history books. Where you won’t find it is in the dictionary. (I
checked my favorite, the Oxford English Dictionary, as well as Dictionary.com
and Merriam Webster.) The word comes from The Book of Mormon and refers to
honeybees. Utah was also original called Deseret, and the term is sometimes
found in poems and hymns to refer to the Church as a group. More on that below.
Beehive
Another
word you’ll find all over Utah, which is fitting, as Utah is known as The
Beehive State. The Beehive emblem is found on all state highway signs and
elsewhere. Early pioneers viewed the honeybee as an industrious, never-lazy
worker laboring for the benefit of the hive. In pioneer terms, that meant a
person working tirelessly for the community. The Mormon pioneers viewed the
honeybee as an example of what they should strive to be like. You start to see
why Utah was first named after the honeybee.
But
there’s more. Youth programs in the Church are split by gender, and the boys
and girls are further split into three groups by age. The youngest group for
girls, ages twelve and thirteen, are called (yep) Beehives. I think meaning of
the name (and hence the message to strive to work hard for the common good) is
a bit lost on today’s generation. But then, the types of goals 21st
century girls are expected to reach are totally different from the girls who
lived in the late 1800s: they no longer have milk cows or plow fields to earn
their medallion.
Mia Maid
This
term doesn’t even make sense outside the Church. The closest thing you can find
in a dictionary is the acronym for Missing
in Action, which is not what this
means. It’s the name for the fourteen- and fifteen-year-old young women class.
If
I understand correctly, the first part of term, used to be in all caps: MIA
Maid. This is because it was an acronym. MIA stood for Mutual Improvement Association, what the youth programs were called
collectively. When young men and young women had activities and cultural events
together, which was at least weekly, they said they were going to MIA or simply
to mutual.
Today,
some people still refer to the weekday youth activities as mutual, but I’m betting most of today’s youth have no idea why.
Laurel
Moving
up to the oldest group of young women, ages sixteen and seventeen. (At
eighteen, or a bit later, typically after high school graduation, young women
start attending Relief Society, the women’s organization.)
Of
course, the laurel plant was commonly used long ago to create a crown or wreath
with which to honor a victor of a competition. (Think the little guy on the
Little Caesar’s box.) I think the idea here is for young women to strive to be
the best they can be, to earn that laurel wreath. And again, of course, modern
girls don’t always know what the term means, and they have very different goals
that mark what it means to be an accomplished young woman.
Today,
a young woman heading off to college on scholarship may be considered to be
accomplished, when that term might have once meant someone who can darn a mean
sock.
Dixie
This
one is specific to Utah. Outside the state, Dixie
refers to the southern states of the U.S., the ones involved in the U.S. Civil
War. And that’s actually where the name came from.
After
being driven out of their homes, with family members killed, and otherwise
being persecuted, the Mormons in Utah wanted to separate themselves from other groups
and be as self-sufficient as possible. When the Civil War broke out, they
needed an alternate source of cotton. Brigham Young sent scouts south to see if
growing cotton might be viable down there. It was. (The area was also a
miserable place to live. Some early settlers quipped that the devil himself
would be quite comfortable there.) And thus the hot, sunny area was named Utah’s Dixie. There’s even a Dixie State
College in the area.
I
could go on and on, but I’ll end with a phrase that has become so common in
prayer that it rolls right off the tongue and therefore has become a bit of a
joke: the request when saying grace at a meal to bless the food to “nourish and
strengthen our bodies.” Some people then add, “and do us the good that we
need.”
This
prayer is often uttered right before teens at mutual snarf down cookies or donuts.
Therefore,
I’ve enjoyed the twist The
Cultural Hall podcast (er, show—right,
Richie?) has put on it, something you’ll hear at the end of many episodes:
“Please bless the sugar out of this crap.”
If
this kind of thing interests you, check out THIS WORD
NERD WEDNESDAY POST as well as THIS
ONE, in which we look more deeply at Mormon words and phrases.
And
be sure to check out the WNW post about how Utahns (and, frankly, a lot of people) pronounce
mountain, and this other one
about another
Utah quirk: pronouncing a short E sound (as in well) when the vowel is technically a long A followed by the letter
L (as in whale, which often sounds
like well in Utah).
And
for even more word nerdiness, be sure to subscribe to the GUMshoes podcast on iTunes. I
co-host with Luisa Perkins,
where we delve into what we call GUM issues:
ones involving GRAMMAR, USAGE, and MECHANICS.
Live
today: An episode all about how Seinfeld has influenced the vernacular!
This episode is SO MUCH FUN, people!
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