Much Obliged

When I saw No Country for Old Men recently, I somehow got to thinking about the Southern/country phrases "much obliged" and "I'd be obliged." (I'm not sure either one was actually in the movie, but Tommy Lee Jones' character gave me that feeling.)

No one in the North or East uses those terms any more. And it struck me that "obliged" is obviously a French-derived word. Noblesse oblige and all that. (Actually, it's French derived from the Latin obligare, literally "to bind to," from the same root that gives us "ligature" and "ligament." Cool, huh?)

So it occurred to me that this is one of those cases (to make a generalization) where the rural parts of the U.S. have hung onto a usage from the language of "high" culture while the urban parts dropped it in favor of stupidities like "I owe you one."