What “Bless Your Heart” Really Means in the South
If you think you know, you don’t
Lord have mercy, if I have to hear another Yankee say that “bless your heart” is Southern for “you’re an idiot” — or worse — I think I might just blow a gasket.
Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t entirely blame non-Southerners for this misunderstanding. I have a sneaking suspicion that much of the blame lies with Southerners themselves who enjoy blowing smoke and making folks feel like they know something when they don’t just to play with them.
The reality is, “bless your heart” is a linguistic chameleon. It can mean a whole lot of things, depending on who’s saying it to whom where and when. I’m reminded more than anything of the famous scene in Donnie Brasco when Donnie tries to explain “forget about it” to his fellow FBI agents. It means “I agree”, “I disagree”, “this is great”, “go to hell”, and of course “forget about it”.
“Bless your heart” in the South is the same kind of deal. If you think you know what it means in an out-of-context kind of way, then you have no idea what it means…
