A Southerner is defending "chunking" it.

Reader Bruce Sharer writes that Southerners often use the verb "to chunk" as a variant of "to chuck," meaning to discard or toss.

Dome had wondered why former Gov. Mike Easley and President George W. Bush both used the word instead of the more familiar "chucked."

But Sharer says it's no big deal, citing as authority the Urban Dictionary, a collaborative online dictionary of slang that frequently verges on offensive: "Southern for chuck it. 1. To discard. 2. To toss."

"Perhaps you are not from down here, i.e., the South," Sharer writes, unintentionally echoing every Southern TV or movie sheriff from the past 40 years. "Number two may explain why Gov. Easley and Pres. Bush used the word chunk."

In fairness, Dome hisself is not from the South, but our more Southern-fried colleagues also thought the word strange.