Journey Proud
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John T. Wilcox:
September 25th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
My mother (born 1897 in middle Georgia) used that expression, “journey proud,” in the sense Clay Witt asked about: “I hardly slept last night, I was so journey proud”–meaning nervous about the upcoming trip. But my wife, born near Atlanta and much interested in local language, had never heard the expression until she married me. There is a lady in my home town in south Georgia, born in 1909 and now 100 years old and still mentally sharp, who says she never heard the expression until I asked her about it today, 09/25/2009. PS: Is “Clay Witt” a pseudonymn? It’s a great name for a clever fellow from the country, especially if he is from a clayey part of the country, like south Georgia.
clay witt:
December 5th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
No, Mr. Wilcox, Clay Witt is my name, and my family is from Virginia and Kentucky.
Mary:
October 12th, 2010 at 9:56 am
My mother said “journey proud” at any occasion of a tripShe also said “land o Goshen” and my yankee brother in law thought she was saying “atlantic ocean. She had many others as well. She was raised in N Florida by a mother from SC.
Dale Williams:
August 20th, 2012 at 10:31 am
My 72-year-old cousin, from a small North Carolina town, used this phrase yesterday, which led me to this site.
I’m 62 and from the same town but had never heard the phrase before. Thanks for the education!
Janet Krohn:
September 5th, 2012 at 9:36 pm
My mother, born and bred in MS, always used this expression when the family was headed on a road trip. I, too, use it to mean that I can’t sleep for being so excited over what the journey will bring.
Peter Logan:
January 9th, 2013 at 5:17 pm
My mother used “journey proud.” She grew up on a Kansas farm in the 20’s and 30’s. After introducing it, its become a favorite of some of my friends, here on Cape Cod.
Peter Logan:
January 9th, 2013 at 9:10 pm
My friend who loves to say, “journey proud,” coined a new phrase this morning. He said he couldn’t sleep last night because he was, “work proud.”
William Taylor:
February 19th, 2013 at 10:11 pm
I am from Eastern NC and I have heard the expression “journey proud” all of my life. However, the meaning of the phase in this locality usually referred to someone who comes back excited from a trip who can’t stop talking about it.
Victoria Solt Dennis:
April 22nd, 2013 at 2:34 pm
My mother always confidently diagnosed any queasiness or ‘feeling funny’ on the eve of a trip as ‘journey pride’. She was born (in 1921) and bred in West Essex, on the outskirts of London, but her mother came from Somerset in the West Country. That may be significant, becaus the Oxford English Dictionary cites this from the London Times of 21 Dec 193: “‘Journey-pride’..will be familiar to your west-country readers”.
Steve:
July 9th, 2013 at 8:25 am
Anne Morrow Lindbergh references this phrase in her book “Listen, The Wind”. She attributes this to her New England ancestors.
Jean:
November 23rd, 2013 at 1:58 pm
My grandmother used the term “journey proud” to describe the inability to sleep the night before a trip (or journey). She grew up in Western NY, but spent her married life in FL.
angela box:
February 8th, 2014 at 1:08 pm
The sweet black man who worked for my grandfather near Pine Bluff, Arkansas used the term during my childhood in the 1950s.
Jeanie:
May 30th, 2014 at 8:45 am
My father, born in 1916 in Stewart County, Georgia used that expression. His ancestors came from Virginia.
Bruno:
June 11th, 2014 at 1:50 am
“Pumped up” or “stoked,” in current parlance. (The excitement and fitful sleep, of course, are symptoms.)
Ben:
July 4th, 2014 at 7:53 am
My uncle Charlie, who himself grew up in the Piedmont of Georgia, used this phrase when I was a boy in the 50’s. My family continues to use it–really glad to know that we are not alone.
Hal O'Brien:
August 8th, 2014 at 5:23 pm
At Midland School, we’ve used “journey proud” since the mid-1970’s, at least, and I suspect it goes back to the founding Headmaster in the 1930’s. Because it’s a boarding school, and most of its students live in either Los Angeles or San Francisco and thus take a Greyhound bus home for vacations, “journey proud” refers to the feeling a student has before going home. Think of it as a lower-key form of “senioritis,” and one wouldn’t be too far off.
Becca Knox:
August 24th, 2014 at 3:10 am
My family from the SW of Virginia uses this term to mean the queasy, unable-to-sleep feelings of the day before a trip. My great-grandmother suffered terribly from the affliction and we learned the term from her.
David Montgomery:
October 17th, 2014 at 10:59 pm
My mother was born in 1914 in rural piedmont North Carolina and she used this expression frequently. Traveling anywhere away from home was a big deal when she was growing up and she said that she could never sleep the night before a planned departure. This did not change much as she grew older. She told me once that when she was in her early 20’s , she and three girl friends had planned to go the the beach and the night before they were going to leave, they all agreed that they wouldn’t sleep that night, so they went ahead and left at midnight. The lack of cell phones or even AAA didn’t prevent being journey proud from putting them on the road.
Ed Sholty:
June 22nd, 2015 at 10:35 am
I am familiar with the phenomenon of ‘journey proud,’ but never knew the expression until I recently heard it on “A Way with Words” on NPR.
There is an analogous German term “(matka = travel, kuume = fever), probably a translation from Swedish.
Further on the use of “proud” in this sense, There is a veterinary term “Proud flesh” describing “The swollen flesh that surrounds a healing wound, caused by excessive granulation.” It is so called because of its swelling up.
I suspect that “pumped” is the best modern equivalent.
Mary Gibson:
October 2nd, 2015 at 5:08 pm
My father, born in 1915, used the term “journey proud” to refer to the unease you suffer the night before a trip. He learned it from his father, evidently. I used the term in my rural area of the Florida panhandle and a sharp former high school principal asked me “which of your relatives is from West Virginia?” My Grandfather, in fact, was. I use the expression myself. It is too colorful to let fall into disuse.
Debbie Williams:
March 26th, 2017 at 6:42 am
Marja Mills states in “The Mockingbird Next Door” that Harper Lee and her sister, Alice Lee, taught her this term, meaning to be excited or nervous just before a trip.
Ralph Smith:
November 21st, 2017 at 9:14 pm
Angela Box, what a coincidence. I grew up in Pine Bluff, AR and remember my elder relatives using this term. Always understood it to mean a sense of excitement and anticipation prior to a journey.
Randy Taplin:
April 19th, 2018 at 8:31 pm
The word detective talks about other meanings for proud. One of the most obscure is used by woodworkers to mean something a bit above the surface, as in “you left that plug a bit proud”. My dentist was interested when I told him that the filling he was grinding down was still a bit proud. The opposite is “scant”.
Bj Hickman:
September 11th, 2019 at 11:28 am
My family, on both maternal and paternal sides, used journey-proud to describe resfeber: “the restless race of the traveler’s heart in anticipation of travel”. My parents came from different communities in northeastern Louisiana and central Louisiana. Both sets of grandparents used it often. My parents were born in the late 1920s, their parents at the turn of that century. Earlier ancestors settled in Mississippi.
Sara B. Moore:
September 30th, 2019 at 9:57 pm
In 1955, at age 7, I couldn’t sleep all night before a road trip from Atlanta to New York City! My older sister was returning on a ship from a summer as an exchange student in Helsinki. It would be docking up there in four days. My mother let me sleep in her twin bed and rubbed my legs to soothe me. She said I was “just journey proud.” I could hear in her voice that she was just as excited. After four days and four glorious nights in four different motels (!) my parents and I got to New York. We then had a night in a grand hotel near Times Square before the ship arrived. I ran ahead of my parents on the sidewalk and spread my arms in flight. My “journey pride” continued to burst in my chest, although I had never heard the expression before and never did again.
Kate:
November 20th, 2019 at 4:07 am
I’m English. My mother born 1907 always used this expression
Sally Russell:
December 8th, 2019 at 7:35 am
Excellent writing in this article. I am from Georgia and grew up before 1970s. I am doing my best to keep “journey proud” alive. I have introduced it in France, England and Canada. No one outside the South has ever heard it, but all understand it. Thank you for such an eloquent and complete explanation.
Julie Hart Tyson:
September 12th, 2020 at 9:49 am
what small town in nc is your cousin from. I heard this phrase in oxford, nc back in 1970.. there was an author there named Thad Stem and I always thought he coined this phrase…
Bob:
April 15th, 2021 at 6:34 pm
In my wife’s family, from Montana and Denver, the phrase they use is “travel proud” which means the same basic thing. I’d never thought to look it up until just now. Interesting etymology.
Jack:
August 23rd, 2021 at 3:26 pm
I was born in Norfolk, VA in 1943, and raised there. I heard the phrase often from both my parents, who were also born there, in 1906 and 1910. I have always thought is was a Southern–especially Virginian–expression.
Rhys Godwin:
March 21st, 2022 at 4:10 pm
“Journey Proud: Recollections of a Fifties Woman” by Claire K. Sargent is a 1999 memoir that uses the term to mean a feeling of great anticipation before a trip. Mrs. Sargent was from MS, but life took her to NYC and later to Phoenix, AZ; all the while riding the ‘journey proud’ feeling of anticipation…..and certainly spreading the use of the expression among the people of her new homes and the readers of her book.