Rainbow Valley
question
Pizen?
Elatia
Jan 24, 2014 11:56AM
In Mary Brings Evil Tidings, she describes Miss Cornelia as "pizen neat." This echoes Anne calling Gilbert "pizen mean" in Anne's House of Dreams.
What does "pizen" mean? A Google search only yields the name of a city in the Czech Republic. If I google "pizen mean", I get references from several old books, but nothing to tell me exactly what it means.
Does it just mean "very" or "greatly?"
What does "pizen" mean? A Google search only yields the name of a city in the Czech Republic. If I google "pizen mean", I get references from several old books, but nothing to tell me exactly what it means.
Does it just mean "very" or "greatly?"
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I believe it's a dialect pronunciation of 'poison', with a general meaning like 'very' or 'extremely' (as you said). I could be completely wrong though.
I’m reading Mandingo and had the same query. It seems the word poison in a southern dialect being denoted pizen might give the right meaning in the context of my book too. When I use that meaning then the sentences make sense whereas I was thinking along the lines of ‘pissy’ or annoying. For instance, one of the characters is complaining about his sister and trying to stop his friend marrying her and says, amongst other mean things, ‘she is right pizen’.
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