meme from nounsandverbs

[kjpepper]

Can I just say I LOVE regional variants on language/childhood games/songs??


A body of water, smaller than a river, contained within relatively narrow banks

brook or stream

The thing you push around the grocery store

Shopping cart. The weirdoes in MA call it a carriage, which seems kinda wrong to me. The carriage is for the baby, the cart is for the gross fairies.

A metal container to carry a meal in

a lunchbox, though now I have an unholy craving for bento. Damn.

The thing that you cook bacon and eggs in

Frying pan or skillet

The piece of furniture that seats three people

Couch.

The device on the outside of the house that carries rain off the roof

gutterbumberchute!!! (5 points for the reference)

The covered area outside a house where people sit in the evening

Porch. Because "veranda monkey" just doesn't sound racist enough.

Carbonated, sweetened, non-alcoholic beverages

Soda. Not everything is a Coke, damn it.

A flat, round breakfast food served with syrup

See icon.

A long sandwich designed to be a whole meal in itself

Sub!

The piece of clothing worn by men at the beach

Hopefully not a borat thong... (I'm guessing the word they want is "trunks")

Shoes worn for sports

Sneakers. I hear "trainers" a lot here.

A flying insect that glows in the dark

Firefly or lightning bug.

The little insect that curls up into a ball

I forget. I used to call them doodlebugs.

The children's playground equipment where one kid sits on one side and goesup while the other sits on the other side and goes down

Teeter-totter.

How you eat pizza

Correctly. Aka, folded lenthwise, eaten voraciously starting with the pointiest end of the slice, saving crust for last.

Where private citizens sell their household goods/stuff in their driveway/front yard

Yard sale.

The thing under a house where the furnace and perhaps a rec room are

Basement, but I have to make special mention of the fact that NY brownstones often have a basement or below ground floor level AND a cellar, and I've been in one that had a true basement (no windows above ground) and a cellar as well as that weird split ground level. I think the distinction was once explained to be that basement=finished. Cellar - unfinished.

The Cellar is also a nice, if expensive, place to get dishes. ;)

The thing that you can get water out of to drink in public places

It's a drinking fountain, but I have heard it referred to around here as a "bubbler."

Comments

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I hadn't seen the "basement" question before, and it got me thinking! The trouble with it in my region is that an awful lot of houses, like mine, are built into the side of a mountain, so it may be only underground on one side of the house. (The front door of my house is on a ground floor; but if you crossed that floor to the back you'd be one story UP from the ground.) I think a lot of people around here just use the term "downstairs" as a noun ("The guest room's in the downstairs") because of that confusion.

Also, when my friends and I have nothing better to argue about we argu about whether it's "soda" or "pop." Thank god no one is crazy enough to refer to all types of soda as "coke."

[austingoddess.livejournal.com]

Mostly the same down here in Texas...

A small body of running water is a creek. Pronounced 'crick' if you're in rural West Texas.

A soft drink is called a Coke, most often, as in:
"You want a Coke?"
"Yeah."
"What kind?"
"Dr Pepper."
'Soda' is also acceptable, but it's a foreign term and always sounds like you're from Minnesota. 'Pop' is right out.

Little ball insects are called roly-polys, household goods are sold at garage sales, and we drink out of water fountains. And we have too many rivers (and therefore too much clay) to have something as useful as a basement. We *dream* of basements.

[morlock.livejournal.com]

i don't know who you keep talking to, but around here its a shopping cart and a water fountain. they call it a carriage and a bubbler in the United Kingdoms of Boston, not here in People's Nations of Western Mass.

remember, there are two different states here.

[carolatina.livejournal.com]

Old friend of Andee from college, just popping up to say LOL your comment made me laugh out loud. Too true!

--Carolyn, former resident of the People's Nations of Western Mass (and Vermont, which is nearly the same thing), current and originally resident of the UK of Boston and Environs

[morlock.livejournal.com]

meh, vermont is a whole state, but it still has about three regions and dialects. theres hippieville, farmington, and woodshole. woodshole is where you hear banjos at night.

[wrpigeek.livejournal.com]

No, no, Vermont is Canada's panhandle. You can tell by the syrup.

[morlock.livejournal.com]

i think both is true.