Blessing biggol hearts
By DAN LANGFORD
I heard a parishioner after church yesterday saying to another, “Bless your biggol heart.” Hearing that warmed mine, for there are two good Southernisms in a single phrase.
First is “Bless your heart,” which is used as an expression of empathy or sympathy, and which I believe is distinctly Southern. If you doubt me, ask yourself a simple question: can you imagine somebody from Brooklyn, Los Angeles, or Peoria saying it?
The other is that wonderfully descriptive adjective, “biggol.” Something may be humongous, huge, large, or merely ample; but sometimes in speech those don’t quite impart the right degree of emphasis. “Biggol” will usually do the trick in such cases. We might write, “Stone Mountain is the largest piece of exposed granite in the world,” but that would sound rather stuffy if spoken. We’d be more liable to say, “That’s a biggol rock right there.”
The moral of this story is to keep on blessing hearts. You’ll have a biggol reward for it someday.