Have You Ever Used This Once-Common Maine Word?
It used to be popular and now it has almost disappeared from Mainer's vocabulary completely! We think we will bring it back!
As you probably know by now, Mainers have our own language sometimes. Sometimes we combine words to make a new one, other times we leave letters off words to pronounce them differently. Sometimes we take existing words and change the meaning.
But did you know there are words that are unique to every state, and they have been being documented in the Dictionary of American Dialect or 'DARE'. However, with the internet in full swing and website like Urban Dictionary, there is little to no need for this special 'DARE' dictionary.
So with the loss of this dictionary comes the loss of unique words from Maine in the past. Huffington Post took a look at some of these words that will soon be lost and determined the best words from 'DARE' for each state and you'll never guess what Maine's best unique word is!
Tunklehead! According to 'DARE' it means 'to be a fool'. It sounds to us like a combo of 'thick' and 'knucklehead'. Have you ever heard a Mainer use Tunklehead? An example of a Mainer using the word tunklehead is: "You can't get there from heah, yah tunklehead!"
Should we save it? Is it worth bringing back?