“Oh Say, Can You See?”

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 This column is about neither our national anthem nor its composer, Francis Scott Key.   Rather, it’s about the Southern proclivity to use the word “sight” for something extraordinary.

     “A sight for sore eyes” is, as best your compiler can determine, a saying with long, long usage in the English-speaking world, and not a usage confined to the South.  But what about similar usages:  are they strictly Southern or not?  Your compiler does not pretend to know, and freely admits he has spent next to no time researching the question.

     In your compiler’s part of the world, if someone is a character, a scamp, or a charming rogue, one might hear said, “He’s a sight!”  It’s sort of like saying, “She’s a mess!”  Or “He’s a cutter!” Or “He’s a sport model!”   But why a “sight”?  Your compiler honestly does not know.

     Sometimes it went even further.  Your compiler can hear his great-aunt Helen, one of Brooks’s great characters, saying, “He’s a sight on this earth!” about someone memorable, of “That’d be sight on this earth!” about something hopeful  or looked forward to.  (There was a third usage, heard occasionally, if someone looked uncharacteristically unorganized and disheveled. “Lord, hon, you look a sight!” Aunt Helen might exclaim as she rushed to help the muddled friend or family member pull himself or herself back together.)

     She’d also refer to some folks as “spizzerinctums,” which she pronounced just as it is spelled, and which seems to be a somewhat obscure 19^th-century American slang term.   In Aunt Helen’s usage, someone who was a “sight on this earth” was probably a notch more socially acceptable than a “spizzerinctum,” or so it always seemed to your compiler.

     The phrase, “a sight on this earth,” is a little  redundant, or something, when one thinks about it. What your compiler means is where, really – other than the earth – would someone see something or somebody (people in airplanes, as well as stars and planets in the sky notwithstanding.)   Your compiler simply doesn’t know whether “a sight on this earth” was an Aunt Helen original, or whether it was said by others, too.  He suspects the latter, but does not know for certain.

    Oh, say, can you see…clear to set your compiler straight on this question?

    And assuming you can, your complier will reward you with the kids’ version of The Star Spangled Banner which he learned as a child:

                Oh say, can you see

                  Any redbugs on me?

                    If you do, pick a few,

                       And we’ll all have red bug stew.

     That, my friends, would be a sight on this earth!

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