"Turned Funny"

Growing up in an isolated area of mountainous East Tennessee, I often heard the expression, "Turned Funny". My family used this term to describe a variety of things. It could be used to describe the personality of a neighbor, relative or a random stranger.  In this sense 'turned funny' meant someone who had an odd or difficult personality. They might have problems with strange or different reactions to questions or social exchanges with others.  These people often were temperamental about requests or questions, and expressed their displeasure with odd remarks not usually made by "OK" folks.  In some sense their comments or behavior were unpredictable.  Mama often used the term without explaining her meaning and I was left to insert my own meaning.  As I got older and in college I came to understand 'turned funny' meant having some sort of personality disorder that the person was either born with or learned early on in life. While this explanation was helpful to me, I must confess that it did little to help me understand the person well enough to engage in lengthy conversations.  My approach was simply to avoid talking to them.

Another use for 'Turned Funny' was to describe the position held by an object when in use or its position when placed on a table or solid object.  An example of this meaning would be to describe the way you improperly held a knife for carving meat or the way you improperly held a lug wrench when changing a tire. Often when I was learning to drive or cook I was told that I was holding the steering wheel 'funny' or slicing the cornbread 'funny'.  This type of feedback also meant you should change the position of your hand or the tool so that you could better work with the object in order to get better results.  Only recently as I was trying to explain to my husband the correct way to cut a loaf of bread, I heard myself say, "You've got the knife 'turned funny' and the slices of bread are coming out wrong." And yes, I still hear myself use 'turned funny' when I am at a loss for the proper explanation for someones behavior at a given time or place.

While I know that my use of this term is not well understood by others outside my Appalachian upbringing, it still seems that it's the best term for things that I otherwise have difficulty explaining or describing.  I don't think I need to check this out with Webster's.