ns of
expression, there will come "spang" from his mouth a coinage of his own.
Instantly he will create (always from English roots, of course) new
words by combination, or by turning nouns into verbs or otherwise
interchanging the parts of speech.

Crudity or deficiency of the verb characterizes the speech of all
primitive peoples. In mountain vernacular many words that serve as verbs
are only nouns of action, or adjectives, or even adverbs. "That bear 'll
meat me a month." "They churched Pitt for tale-bearin'." "Granny kept
faultin' us all day." "Are ye fixin' to go squirrelin'?" "Sis blouses
her waist a-purpose to carry a pistol." "My boy Jesse book-kept for the
camp." "I disgust bad liquor." "This poke salat eats good." "I ain't
goin' to bed it no longer" (lie abed). "We can muscle this log up." "I
wouldn't pleasure them enough to say it." "Josh ain't much on
sweet-heartin'." "I don't confidence them dogs much." "The creek away up
thar turkey-tails out into numerous leetle forks."

A verb will be coined from an adverb: "We better git some wood, bettern
we?" Or from an adjective: "Much that dog and see won't he come along"
(pet him, make much of him). "I didn't do nary thing to contrary her."
"Baby, that onion 'll strong ye!" "Little Jimmy fell down and benastied
himself to beat the devil."

Conversely, nouns are created from verbs. "Hit don't make no differ." "I
didn't hear no give-out at meetin'" (announcement). "You can git ye one
more gittin' o' wood up thar." "That Nantahala is a master shut-in, jest
a plumb gorge." Or from an adjective: "Them bugs--the little old
hatefuls!" "If anybody wanted a history of this county for fifty years
he'd git a lavish of it by reading that mine-suit testimony." Or from an
adverb: "Nance tuk the biggest through at meetin'!" (shouting spell). An
old lady quoted to me in a plaintive quaver:

"It matters not, so I've been told,
Where the body goes when the heart grows cold;

"But," she added, "a person has a rather about where he'd be put."

In mountain vernacular the Old English strong past tense still lives in
begun, drunk, holped, rung, shrunk, sprung, stunk, sung, sunk, swum.
Holp is used both as preterite and as infinitive: the _o_ is long, and
the _l_ distinctly sounded by most of the people, but elided by such as
drop it from almost, already, self (the _l_ is elided from help by many
who use that form of the verb).

Examples of a strong preterite with dialectical c