Fixin to

chico   Tue Mar 10, 2009 5:48 pm GMT
hi all,

i am true southerner from LA and MS. i commonly use the phrase "fixin to". i know that it is like preparing to as fix can mean "to prepare" as well as to "repare".

recently while talking to a canadian friend he told me that he loves some of the archaic expressions that are still found in the south that have fallen out of common use elsewhere and he sited this as an example.

i know that my grandmother used "holp me" for help me until the day she died. it is a form that was preserved in the ozarks if not other places and was at one time used commonly in England.

can anyone help me find some examples of "fixing" used as prepare in English in the days gone by. maybe some literature. i would appreciate it.

thanks and please leave the negative comments off.
upstater   Tue Mar 10, 2009 6:38 pm GMT
How about:

"I'm fixing supper now."

I think this could still be used in the North these days.
Jef   Tue Mar 10, 2009 6:56 pm GMT
If I'm not mistaken, "holp" is an archaic past tense form of "help". But your grandmother used it in the present tense??
Poliglob   Tue Mar 10, 2009 11:43 pm GMT
'Fixin' to' (meaning about to) was around at least as early as the 1800s in black dialect. It's in a slightly different form, though -- 'fixin' for to' rather than just 'fixin' to'. Here are two lines from the Book of Uncle Remus by Joel Chandler Harris [1880].

"Co'se Brer Rabbit know de game dat Brer Fox wuz fixin' fer ter play...." [Because Brother Rabbit knew the game that Brother Fox was fixing for to play....]

'I'm fixin fer ter make you a nice cup er tea, Brer Wolf.'
[I'm fixing for to make you a nice cup of tea, Brother Wolf.]

Here's a more recent example from a white speaker and without the 'for'. It's from Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird [1960]. "I was fixin' to run off...."
chico   Thu Mar 12, 2009 4:39 am GMT
thanks,

and yes at times my grandma used it in the present tense unless my memory fails me. thanks for the examples, it really helps.

i was wondering if fixing to meaning about to was ever used in England and if by people other than the "black creolized" english. was it used in shakespeare's times? that kinda thing.

chico
Poliglob   Thu Mar 12, 2009 1:49 pm GMT
Well, a quick search of Shakespeare's works shows that it didn't appear there. Determining whether anybody at all used it in England would be much more difficult. Here's what a net source claims, though. "Expressions like 'fixing to,' which had never been used in England, were 'cropping up' (an expression going back to Middle English) in the colonial press by 1716." http://www.answers.com/topic/english-language