gone pecan

n. a person who is doomed, defeated, or beyond rescue; a goner. Subjects: Lousiana, Southern, English, Colloquial

Editorial Note: As noted in the 2003 citation, pecan is pronounced to rhyme with gone, so it’s something like “puh-KAHN” rather than “PEE-kann.” This expression is particularly common in Louisiana. Similar terms given by the Dictionary of American Regional English are gone goose, gone gosling, gone coon, and gone beaver.

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Citations: 1990 Joe Gyan Jr. Baton Rouge State Times (La.) (June 28) “Tapes of secret phone calls center on Connick’s involvement”: Aucoin reminds Burke that, if he doesn’t have copies of the betting sheets by Tuesday, “I’m a gone pecan.” 2001 Bob E. Lee Writ Denied (Jan. 9) p. 62: The Chief Assistant keeps a scoreboard in his office on Wins and Losses. One too many Losses and you’re a “gone pecan.” 2002 Patty Friedmann Secondhand Smoke (Sept.) p. 215: Mealworm walks up to the pond carefully, knowing if he falls in he’s a gone pecan. 2003 Paul Fleischman Breakout (Aug.) p. 19: “I’m a gone pecan,” the last two words rhyming. 2006 Boston Globe (Mass.) (Apr. 6) “Mandisa is eliminated on ‘Idol’”: Mandisa is a gone pecan, as they say in some parts of the South; she’s got soul, tons of soul, but that apparently doesn’t help when you butcher a country song.

Posted 13 Apr 06 | Permalink | Tell a Friend

Reader comments:

Anyone can grasp the meaning from the context. What I’d like to know is the origin, please.

by mistercopacetic 16 Apr 06, 0510 GMT

Like most words, the origin is unknown. Also, like most words, if we did know the origin it would probably be both useless and boring.

by Grant Barrett 16 Apr 06, 0900 GMT

I grew up with this phrase - it was one of my father’s favorites. I thought he was the only one to actually use it, but the fact that we’re from Louisiana (he’s from Lake Charles, in particular) jibes well with the citation above. We really do have a lot of pecans. And indeed, “puh-KAHN” is how we pronounce it. “PEE-can” is for yankees, and hearing it drives us batty. Especially if it has that super-nasal, midwestern “a” sound. Yeesh.

by Scott 18 Apr 06, 0423 GMT

So the pecan trees that I can’t get to grow down in the Ozarks are a gone pecan, eh? That works for me.

by pablo 21 Apr 06, 0521 GMT

“Like most words, the origin is unknown. Also, like most words, if we did know the origin it would probably be both useless and boring.”

Could two statements be more incorrect?

Most English words *can* be traced back to their ancestors in an older language, and the Oxford English Dictionary cites the first known usage of every word in every sense, giving a history of each word’s evolution for almost 1000 years. (Of course, the origins of *those* essentially foreign roots is in most cases a mystery, but that is not what you were talking about.)

As to your suggestion that word origins are “useless and boring”—you’ re just nuts.

by adam ology 16 Nov 06, 0500 GMT

You’re talking completely out of your ass, Adam. As someone who has worked for Oxford University Press as a lexicographer and dictionary editor and knows a dozen OED editors professionally and personally, including etymologists, I can tell you with no equivocation that the OED cites are in no way conclusive nor exhaustive. Most terms and expressions have not been, cannot be, and will never be traced back to their absolute origins, even in the written record. The best we have is educated guesswork and traces in an incomplete written record. Not only that, but the OED is nowhere near complete: it does not have “every” word nor “every” sense of the words it does have. It is, as every OED editor will tell you, an incomplete work in progress. You’d best go somewhere else to tell people how to suck eggs.

by Grant Barrett 16 Nov 06, 0530 GMT

The origin has to do with the rhyme it creates in southern Louisiana. “Gone Pecan,” much like the rhyme “later alligator,” the alliteration “dead as a door nail,” or the LSU football cheer “hot boudin, cold cous-cous, come on Tigers, push, push, push!”

by Aaron 21 Dec 07, 0910 GMT