Note 23 — Chapter XIX

The total absence of the word pail not only from the dialect, but even from cultivated speech in the Southern and Border States until very recently, is a fact I leave to be explained on further investigation. The word is an old one and a good one, but I fancy that its use in England could not have been generally diffused in the seventeenth century. So a Hoosier or a Kentuckian never pared an apple, but peeled it. Much light might be thrown on the origin and history of our dialects by investigating their deficiencies.