Coal Region glossary · Everyday Talk
yo butt
A friendly way to address someone — dropped at the front of a sentence or tagged on the end. Almost always affectionate, even when it’s “Yo butt, get the hell off my lawn!”
Respelling
YOH-buht
Also heard
butt · yo bott · hoh butt
Register
Almost always affectionate
Heard in
Hard-coal country
What it means
A way to address a person.
- // principal
A warm, all-purpose way to address a person — friend, stranger, cousin, or the guy holding up the line at the deli counter. It marks the speaker as local and the moment as neighborly.
- // placement
Works at the front of a sentence as a call, or tagged on the end as a nudge. Sometimes it collapses to just “butt.”
- // variants · by mountain
Comes out “yo bott” or “hoh butt” depending on what side of what mountain you hail from. Same warmth, different vowel.
“Yo butt, get the hell off my lawn!”
Front of the sentence. Affectionate even mid-holler — the yo butt keeps it neighborly.
“Grab me a pounder while you’re up, yo butt.”
Tagged on the end. A soft nudge between friends. Illustrative usage.
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