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When I first came across "abisselfa," I thought it was just gibberish; but I was wrong. Although now an obsolete term, abisselfa, a noun, is how the letter "a" was denominated when it formed a syllable by itself. The term is a contraction of "a by itself, a."
In 1835, Augustus Baldwin Longstreet (1790-1870) authored "Georgia Scenes, Characters, Incidents, &c., in the First Half Century of the Republic," a book of humorous sketches about social life and customs he observed in Georgia. His sketch "The Turn Out" begins, "In the good old days of fescues, abisselfas, and anpersants, terms which used to be familiar in this country during the Revolutionary war, and which lingered in some of our county schools for a few years afterward, . . ."
Longstreet's "Georgia Sketches" marks the beginning of the short-lived literary genre known as Southwestern Humor, which flourished in America from 1835 to 1861.
Other articles on Americanisms and language are available by selecting Featured Articles > The English We Use above.
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