As the 12 days of Christmas wind down, we must now wait another year before singing that old favorite about the excessively generous lover showering his sweetheart with redundant gifts, among them a pear tree plus partridge times 12. It will come as no surprise that many New Englanders will belt out a lusty “PAH tridge in a pear tree,” disposing of the first R in the old familiar way (pahk the cah etc.), but it may surprise you to learn that in days of yore, most people in New England pronounced it patridge with the short A in “cat.” Some may still use this pronunciation, or remember grandparents who did.
Most likely, you have never seen a partridge in the wild in New England, that is, the gray partridge (Perdrix perdrix). The Audubon Society reports that in North America, they are found mostly on the Northern Great Plains, Rockies, St. Lawrence Valley and Maritimes, but their range is seriously compromised everywhere except in Alberta and Saskatchewan. It is a species introduced from Europe, but a welcome one, brought here in the 18th century for game, and it still attracts hunters on the Plains. If you think you’ve seen a partridge in New England, it’s another species altogether. Since the time of the Pilgrims, Americans, like Adam in the Garden, have been naming the birds and beasts, picking the term closest to the Old World creature they were familiar with, so “partridge” was slapped onto a wide variety of game birds including the ptarmigan, the chukar (the Asian newcomer), and here in the North that bird in the pear tree is the ruffed grouse (Bonasa umbellus). “Partridge” in the West is the California quail (Callipepla californica), and in the South it’s the quail’s cousin, bob-white (Colinus virginianus), which in New England and the North is called a “quail”. Confused? Thank Linnaeus for binomial nomenclature.
But wait, there’s more: There are even those in New England, including Thoreau, who call the flicker the “partridge woodpecker,” perhaps because our ancestors used to eat them like other game birds, while the “partridge hawk” is another name for the goshawk, owing to its fondness for grouse. To make things even more complicated in the naming game, “pheasant” today commonly refers to the ring-necked pheasant, but that wasn’t successfully introduced until the end of the 19th century, so earlier references to pheasants are always the grouse and may still refer to them today in the eastern U.S.
“Patridge” for “grouse” was also not uncommon in other northern states and in Kentucky. In Michigan, the natives have reduced it simply to “pat” (“my dog flushed a pat yesterday”) while in parts of the South, where, as in New England speech, the R is dropped after vowels, it became “pateridge”, “patturge” or “potturge.” In other parts of the South, among Black speakers, the second R is sometimes lost: “pattidge” or “pottidge.”
There’s a different pronunciation for each of the 12 days of Christmas. Let’s at least keep “patridge” alive in New England to honor our ancestors.
Dale Coye is a member of the American Dialect Society. He has taught English and the humanities at several universities and worked in area theaters as a dialect coach and director. He grew up on a dairy farm in central New York and now lives in Wilton.
Do you have a word that you’d like to know more about? Email news@ledgertranscript.com with WORDS in the subject line and we’ll get your word to Dale.