Bad Blood: Euphemism for syphilis.
Blood Thinner: Euphemism for a laxative.
Builds Blood: Stimulating, helps with energy, helps with anemia.
Cleans the Body: Euphemism for a laxative, vermifuge.
Clears the Blood: Euphemism for a laxative.
Flooding: Heavy menses or heavy bleeding during childbirth. Also used for many unknown gynecological issues.
High Blood: High blood pressure. Sometimes also refers to anger, stress issues, and people with ruddy complexions.
Liver Growed: Illness affecting babies and is characterized by lethargy, not taking to feeding, or a general state of poor health. Said to be caused by the baby’s liver attaching to the lining of its body cavity. Cured most often by shaking the baby.
Loss of Courage: Euphemism for impotency or loss of sexual drive.
Loss of Nature: Euphemism for impotency.
Low Blood: Low blood pressure. Sometimes refers to anemic conditions or to those who are generally seen as being weak or sickly.
Spring Tonic: Strong plant decoctions taken for a short amount of time in the spring to build the health of the body for the coming year. Usually a mild laxative like sassafras or a diuretic like dandelion or burdock root.
Summer Complaint: Mysterious illness that usually only affects children and specifically during the summer. Characterized by chills and a fever. Could refer to heat stroke. Often deadly.
Tetter: Name given to many forms of itchy dermatitis. Like refers to eczema or psoriasis.
Thrash: Or “thrush” as it’s commonly known. Yeast infection of the mouth that almost strictly affects children. Cured using astringent plants like green oak leaf, witch hazel, or cinquefoil. Also cured by a Thrash Blower, a specialized doctor able to “blow” the thrash out of the child’s mouth.
White Livered: Strange disease connected to sexual promiscuity. Likely refers to an STD but which one no one really knows. Thought to also be connected to witchcraft, giving way to the phrase, “White livered widder,” referring to a widow who can curse a man’s “potency.”
Bad Things: Refers specifically to a curse or hex that was physically put onto a person, usually fed to them, sewn into their clothing, or picked up by walking through witchcraft materia magica.
Goomered: The condition of being cursed or hexed. Can be used as a verb, as in, “I’m gonna find me some stuff and goomer that son of a bitch!”
Hainted: Ozark word for “haunted” as in, a “hainted barn.” Likewise, a ghost is often called a “haint” or a “ha’nt.” Can be used as a verb, as in, “If Sissy Pollard ain’t careful, she’s gonna get hainted by some witch!”
Live Things: A mysterious illness characterized by the feeling of having crawling animals inside your body. This is a cursed condition, always sent by a witch. The animals, which in the Ozarks are almost always snakes, lizards, toads, ground puppies (salamanders), cockroaches, or flies, are delivered into the body through eating the dead, dried remains of the corresponding animal that were secreted into the victim’s food by a witch. This disease likely has a connection to actual internal parasites like tapeworms.
Put Something Down: The action of a witch placing materia magica on the ground for a victim to walk through, thereby “picking up” the curse. Can be buried.
Spellt, Spelled: The condition of being cursed or hexed.
Stuff: Malign spells, hexes, and curses.
Throw Something: The action of witch throwing, either physically or symbolically, materia magica at a victim or their property. Usually used in reference to the dreaded witch bullet, see Part II.
Walked Through Something: The action of a victim walking over or through materia magica that was “put down” in their path.
Wished, Witched: The condition of being cursed or hexed.
jacobvanloon
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