Down with the Yats

New Orleans is full of linguistic perculiarities and treasures: Burgundy St pronounced with the stress on the 'gundy' not the 'bur'; Tchoupatoulis, the area of the city known as chop (the local joke goes, 'if you can spell it, you're not from here'); Clio, or 'CL ten' as it's known by the Yats; here are a few of my favourite idiomatic ticks from the Big Easy:

pantie-waisted                    - wimpy/weak
ghetto-greeter                   - guard-dog
keep it on the down-low      - keep it quiet/be discreet
where y'at                          - how are you?

For a fuller and richer sense of it all: Yats Wiki