Learn English – Is “giffy” (meaning airborne salt spray) a real word

etymologyis-it-a-wordword-usage

My mother (from Charleston, South Carolina) uses the word "giffy" (spelling unknown; hard g sound) for airborne salt spray that gets all over cars, windows, and (in extreme cases) power lines when you have a windy day near a body of salt water. [Actually the day doesn't have to be locally windy if you are near the surf, which can put salt spray into the air using the strength of winds far away.] Unfortunately my google-foo was insufficient to prove that this word, with this meaning, actually exists.

Is this term used outside my immediate family, and/or does it have an obvious heritage from better-known terms?

Best Answer

Okay, it seems to mean cloudy or damp. American Dialect Society's South Carolina Word List has an entry.

giffy [ˈɡɪfɪ]: adj. Cloudy and damp, applied to the weather. Origin undetermined, possibly African.

giffy [ˈɡɪfɪ]: adj. Cloudy and damp, applied to the weather. Origin undetermined, possibly African.

And from Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands by Lidia Parrish.

... even Dr. Turner is puzzled by "giffy", which on Sapelo means damp.

"Even Dr. Turner is puzzled by "giffy", which on Sapelo means damp."

Weirdly, I found these guessing there might be a Gullah connection, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

From Two Hundred Years of Charleston Cooking edited by Lettie Gay. (Never fail to check local cookbooks for odd words.)

Pie crust doesn't turn out well in "giffy" weather, for flour, even flour stored in a heated house, absorbs moisture.

"Pie crust doesn't turn out well in "giffy" weather, for flour, even flour stored in a heated house, absorbs moisture."

I can't help but wonder if the much more common iffy weather isn't the version that caught hold.