Growing up in South Jersey exposes one to a rich and often disarming vernacular. What ails you was one of those catch all imponderables that seemed to be exclusive property of Salem, NJ and the area immediately surrounding that very old and very sleepy little hamlet. What ails you could function as a literal query; it could also express surprise at particular behavior as in What ails you boy, spending all of your money on that Hummer? Of course by interrogating one’s motive with regard to behavior patterns, one was also expressing extreme doubt regarding the sanity of the individual in question. One might also toss a greeting, a salutation as it were, by reducing the edginess of the delivery and making it more voluble, friendly: What ails you?–or the more contemporary, ’s up?, with the WHAT being completely eliminated in the process of contraction. I have a good chuckle when I recall my mother, sometimes laughingly, sometimes angrily, but always in quintessential South Jersey fashion exclaiming, What ails you, after a tongue in cheek delivery of an outlandish comment or an equally bizarre physical pantomime in place of verbal content. My mother took me and my actions literally so often, I became adept at building just enough delay in my comic routines for her to appreciate them and when she did I’d be rewarded with her singular, What ails you?, which, in that context, was purely another way to acknowledge her pleasure at getting the joke and, perhaps, my ingenuity at being able to share it with her.
Anyway, I couldn’t resist what “aled” me this morning.
Nope. Definitely not just South Jersey. I’ve heard and said “What ails you?” in all those situations all my life. Though perhaps, not as frequently as your Mom, and more frequently concerning ill temper or actual physical complaint than the other.