pig trail

pig trail pronunciation

/PIG trayl/

Meaning

A pig trail is a narrow, twisty rural road or woods path, the kind that feels like livestock cut it first and people just kept using it. In redneck talk it covers goat-path county lanes, old logging spurs, and hunting tracks where the brush grabs both mirrors. Arkansas famously named a scenic mountain highway the Pig Trail, but everyday speech uses it for any skinny back way that ain't the main road.

How folks use it

• “Take that pig trail behind the church if you want to skip town traffic.”
• “His place is two miles down a pig trail that turns to mud when it rains.”

Origin and etymology

Likely from trails so narrow they suited hogs or other stock winding through hills. The phrase is common in Appalachia, the Ozarks, and other Southern mountain country. Encyclopedia of Arkansas records Highway 23's Pig Trail Scenic Byway, used for decades by Razorbacks fans as a short, curvy mountain route. The proper name grew out of the same folk sense of a skinny mountain road.

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