Favor | The Citizen

We all know this word in its many universal senses:  

• You can do your compiler a favor (in which case you oblige him), 
• You tend to favor your right foot over your left since a cow stepped on your left big toe (in which case you are taking tender care), 
• You favored Langford over his opponent in the recent contested mayoral race in Brooks  (in which case you showed preference, approval, and support, which your compiler greatly appreciates),  and
• Por favor – the Spanish word for “please.”  It is pronounced differently than in English, but is quite kin to at least one of the usages above.

So “favor” is quite a versatile word, no matter in what language one is conversing or which pronunciation one is using.

But we in the South, traditionalists to the core, employ yet another usage – a venerable one which dates to Fifteenth Century English and which was apparently used widely by all English speakers until well into the Nineteenth Century. It’s the use of “favor” to indicate a similarity of appearance – where one person looks very much like another.   Most dictionaries call this usage “chiefly Southern.” 

If your compiler were to say, “Adrian certainly favors his grandfather,” then he would not be suggesting that Adrian gives his grandfather special privileges (although Adrian is probably inclined to, as all kids are to loving parents and grandparents.)   What your compiler would mean is that Adrian is the “spitting image”  — the doppelganger, if you will – of his grandpa, down to the mischievous gleam in the eye.

Everyone says your compiler favors his late father, who grew up in Brooks and was the primary source of the many Southernisms your compiler knows, uses, and writes about.  He lived from 1939 until 2001, and is sorely missed a quarter-century after his passing.   Readers can be the judge of whether or not the young men in the two photos below, who are indeed father and son, favor each other or not.  The fainter photo is from 1956, and the bolder-colored one is from 1981.

But regardless of what you see below, please know that when we Southerners say someone favors another,  we may be reverting to our Old English roots and invoking a usage with which non-Southerners are unfamiliar.   Do us a favor and understand that, please, rather than laughing it off as a regional eccentricity.  It’s not eccentric; it has six hundred years’ solid usage behind it.

It would seem you turkeys who quit using favor in that fashion just may be the goofballs.