What “Bless Your Heart” Really Means in the South

If you think you know, you don’t

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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. Because it only means what it means in the moment.

Here are a few examples of what this endlessly versatile phrase can indicate. (The speaker here is a woman because it’s a phrase that women tend to use much more often than men, for some reason.)

Oh my goodness!

You walk to a friend’s house in a rainstorm. She opens the door and says, “Bless your heart, look at you, you’re soaked to the bone, now get inside this house!”

How lucky for you!

You’re a high school senior and you tell your neighbor you just got a scholarship to Emory University. She says, “Well bless your heart, that is just wonderful!”

I am so sorry

You run into a friend at the store. She takes a look at you and asks what’s wrong. You tell her you just got laid off. She says, “Well bless your heart. If there’s anything I…