ORIGINS {DRAFT COPY #2 currently being edited}
In the 1950’s and 1960’s, as formal education became more standardized throughout the U.S., and as regional dialects became increasingly supplanted by “broadcast English” from radio and television, antegodlin began to fall from the common vernacular. One researcher suggests that “the main reason for the decline of the use of antegodlin among younger speakers was that the word was not sanctioned by common dictionaries.” By the last decades of the Twentieth Century, the word had faded into relative obscurity.
antegodlin‘s origins appear to lie in the British dialectic word “goggle,” which meant “to shake or tremble.” The original British “ante-goglin” transitioned over time in the U.S. until the pronunciation “ante-godlin” became more common. Variations in regional pronunciation and spelling produced the less common spelling, “anti-godlin,” which led to a folk interpretation of its meaning as “against God.”
As the word gained currency across the southern U.S. in the early 1900’s, it was drawn into that broad zone of rural America where everyday life and narrow, rigid religious beliefs coexisted with little separation. As antegodlin came to refer to “anything not parallel to something having well-established lines,” it came to imply non-conformance with conventional religious beliefs. One writer recalled that his grandfather stated that the regional variant “antigodlin” referred to the idea that “the ‘four corners of the earth’ were created by God, so that anyone who laid the foundation of a new building should make it ‘square with the world,’ since it would otherwise be anti-godlin – ‘against the wish or example of God’.
At least one other observer has suggested that the earlier strictures attributed to a rigid, adversarial concept of God are evidence of a period of rigid definitions and dogmatic systems of belief. This viewpoint suggests that the geometrically “regular” and “square” notions of God’s world are thus a product mankind’s too-narrow conception of a finite God; thus the essential irregular nature of the infinitely variable Divine does, indeed, pre-date man’s attempts to ~~~~~~~~
{ … to be continuted . . . }
THE STORY
>>ALL OVER AGAIN >> The word “antegodlin“ first appeared in American English in the eastern United States somewhere between 1895 and 1900. It spread rapidly during the early 1900’s across the southeastern United States, across Texas, and into the Southwest. Its usage peaked between the 1930’s and 1940’s, as the word was in common usage throughout the southern and western states.In the 1950’s and 1960’s, as formal education became more standardized throughout the U.S., and as regional dialects became increasingly supplanted by
“broadcast English” from radio and television, antegodlin began to fall from the common vernacular. One researcher suggests that “the main reason for the decline of the use of antegodlin among younger speakers was that the word was not sanctioned by common dictionaries.” By the last decades of the Twentieth Century, the word had faded into relative obscurity.
antegodlin‘s origins appear to lie in the British dialectic word “goggle,” which meant “to shake or tremble.” The original British “ante-goglin” transitioned over time in the U.S. until the pronunciation “ante-godlin” became more common. Variations in regional pronunciation and spelling produced the less common spelling, “anti-godlin,” which led to a folk interpretation of its meaning as “against God.”
As the word gained currency across the southern U.S. in the early 1900’s, it was drawn into that broad zone of rural America where everyday life and narrow, rigid religious beliefs coexisted with little separation. As antegodlin came to refer to “anything not parallel to something having well-established lines,” it came to imply non-conformance with conventional religious beliefs. One writer recalled that his grandfather stated that the regional variant “antigodlin” referred to the idea that “the ‘four corners of the earth’ were created by God, so that anyone who laid the foundation of a new building should make it ‘square with the world,’ since it would otherwise be anti-godlin – ‘against the wish or example of God’.
At least one other observer has suggested that the earlier strictures attributed to a rigid, adversarial concept of God are evidence of a period of rigid definitions and dogmatic systems of belief. This viewpoint suggests that the geometrically “regular” and “square” notions of God’s world are thus a product mankind’s too-narrow conception of a finite God; thus the essential irregular nature of the infinitely variable Divine does, indeed, pre-date man’s attempts to ~~~~~~~~
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~Bob Edwards
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