the language meme
Dec. 4th, 2003 11:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioWhat do you call...
1. A body of water, smaller than a river, contained within relatively narrow banks?
Stream. Maybe a creek (not "crick"). A creek is smaller than a stream; an average person should be able to jump across a creek.
2. The thing you push around the grocery store?
Shopping cart.
3. A metal container to carry a meal in?
Huh? Consensus seems to be that we're talking about lunch boxes, but they're plastic these days and I think were when I was a kid, and anyway, I carry my lunch in a decidedly non-metal bag. :-)
4. The thing that you cook bacon and eggs in?
(No bacon here!) Frying pan or skillet; the words are interchangable.
5. The piece of furniture that seats three people?
Couch. I'll accept sofa as synonymous, but it's not the word I use.
6. The device on the outside of the house that carries rain off the roof?
Gutters (horizontal) and downspouts (vertical).
7. The covered area outside a house where people sit in the evening?
Porch.
8. Carbonated, sweetened, non-alcoholic beverages?
Pop. "Soda" is a concoction involving pop and ice cream.
9. A flat, round breakfast food served with syrup?
Pancake. For the Aussies: we have several kinds of syrup, maple and various fruit-based ones being the most common. If you go to a pancake house you may well encounter all of: maple, blueberry, raspberry, boysenberry, apricot, and several more. What is "golden syrup"?
10. A long sandwich designed to be a whole meal in itself?
I suppose they're talking about hoagies here (known by some as subs). While I grew up with only the word "hoagie" to describe this kind of sandwich, my first job was at Rudy's House of Submarines. Go figure.
11. The piece of clothing worn by men at the beach?
Assuming the men are headed for the water... swimsuits. Same word as for women; I don't distinguish.
12. Shoes worn for sports?
Tennis shoes. We didn't have different shoes for different sports when I was a kid; they were all tennis shoes.
13. Putting a room in order?
Cleaning up, which is different from cleaning (the latter involves the removal of dust, cat hair, etc). The phrase "redd up" is native to Pittsburgh, but I have never uttered those words except in conversations like this one.
14. A flying insect that glows in the dark?
Firefly.
15. The little insect that curls up into a ball?
This description means nothing to me. Several of my friends
describe it as a "roly poly", which is also meaningless to me.
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
ksnell tried to further clarify for me, but lo,
I am a clueless city kid, even though I grew up in the
suburbs.
16. The children's playground equipment where one kid sits on one side and goes up while the other sits on the other side and goes down?
See-saw.
17. How do you eat your pizza?
(Hey, that's not a language question!)
Pick up slice with left hand, eat starting from point, frequently discard bones (the remnant of crust that contains no sauce or toppings and that is usually overcooked to my taste). If the slice is too droopy to be held this way, I'll use a fork in my right hand to help support the piece. Failing that, I'll flip the point over onto the rest of the piece and pick it up. Failing all that, it's time to get out the knife and fork.
18. What's it called when private citizens put up signs and sell their used stuff?
Garage sale. Also yard sale.
19. What's the evening meal?
Dinner. The canonical meals are breakfast, lunch, and dinner, not breakfast, dinner, and supper. This is true even if the large meal that day is lunch.
20. The thing under a house where the furnace and perhaps a rec room are?
Basement. I grew up knowing this as the cellar (the term my parents use); I have no idea when I switched to basement.
Language
Date: 2003-12-04 09:39 pm (UTC)I'm 47 (48 in two weeks), I grew up in Greensboro, NC., with a Georgia cracker father and a New Jersey Socialite mother. I moved to Boston at 19 and Michigan in 1979 and in California in 1994....
My Q&A are in this color, in case someone wants to cut and paste theirs in.
1. A body of water, smaller than a river, contained within relatively narrow banks?
If easily stepped over, a creek; if wide enough you have to jump over and a relatively fast flow, a stream; if in a sharply-angled culvert at the front of your yard, a ditch.
2. The thing you push around the grocery store?
a cart. or, a grocery cart.
3. A metal container to carry a meal in?
A lunch box.
4. The thing that you cook bacon and eggs in?
frying pan. Skillets are electric or cast iron. And you use a spatula or a fork to turn them over, as opposed to a rubber scraper, which one uses to get the last bit of batter off the side of a bowl.
5. The piece of furniture that seats three people?
Couch. Sofas are bigger and have upholstery that you can get dirty so you don't sit on them.
6. The device on the outside of the house that carries rain off the roof?
Gutters (run alongside the roof) and rainspouts (vertical)
7. The covered area outside a house where people sit in the evening?
Porch. The stoop is where the uncovered steps are.
8. Carbonated, sweetened, non-alcoholic beverages?>/b>
a Coke, as in "You guys want some coke? We have Reg'lar, Dite, ornge, Doctuh Peppuh, Sevm-up, and maybe even some Pepsi in the fridge."
Pop is what my daughter drinks (born in Michigan, moved to California at 16), and soda is what my son drinks (born in michigan, but moved to California when he was 4).
9. A flat, round breakfast food served with syrup?
pancakes with maple syrup. My dad ate flapjacks, however, and wanted "golden syrup", which is dark Karo or other corn syrup (Blech).
10. A long sandwich designed to be a whole meal in itself?
A Sub sandwich, altho in Michigan they called them "Jersey Subs." These are sandwiches sort of like Dagwoods only on a long bun instead of square slices of regular bread.
Language, part 2
Date: 2003-12-04 09:40 pm (UTC)11. The piece of clothing worn by men at the beach?
Trunks. or Speedos.
12. Shoes worn for sports?
Sneakers. Or Track Shoes. Or Cleats, depending on what kind of sport one is engaged in. Or, I suppose, Tennis Shoes if one is planning on playing tennis. (The society girls in my Jr. High locker room wore "tennies.") Yuck.
13. Putting a room in order?
A quick job done when someone calls to tell you they'll be there in ten minutes: "A lick and a polish." A more thorough job is "Tidying;" A full-fledge effort is "Cleaning up." You "sweep up" something that has broken or spilled.
14. A flying insect that glows in the dark?
Light'nin bug.
15. The little insect that curls up into a ball?
Pill Bugs. Or, if you're my aunts and uncles from Georgia, and "Armadil-lah Bug". They look like this Curled and this rolled up, Ms. C.
16. The children's playground equipment where one kid sits on one side and goes up while the other sits on the other side and goes down?
teeter-totter.
17. How do you eat your pizza?
Hot, and then cold.(puzzled) If sliced narrow enough, holding at the back and stuffed into my mouth; if need be, folded over.
18. What's it called when private citizens put up signs and sell their used stuff?
Yard sale.
19. What's the evening meal?
supper, if you're my dad, or Dinner, if you're my mom or my grandmother or either of my two ex-husbands. Except on Sundays, Easter, Christmas, or Thanksgiving, when Dinner is after Church (1 or 2 pm) and supper is when Walter Cronkite is on doing the "21st Century" just before "Time Tunnel" comes on.
20. The thing under a house where the furnace and perhaps a rec room are?
Basement. Cellars are where wine, apples, and other root veggies are kept, or have dirt floors. Except at my house now, where I have an undercroft which is half finished and half not. ;-)
bugs
Date: 2003-12-05 07:16 am (UTC)Y'know, I don't actually know a name for those. How odd.
Bolder..
Date: 2003-12-04 09:41 pm (UTC)Re: Language
Date: 2003-12-05 07:22 am (UTC)Another maybe-regional difference: I use fingers for the latter application. On the very last pass around the bowl, you get to lick the finger instead of adding it to the pan (or whatever).
The stoop is where the uncovered steps are.
In my lexicon, an entrance has a porch or a stoop (or nothing, but that's rare), but never both. That is, concrete steps leading up to a porch aren't a stoop, but concrete steps with up to a square yard or so of flat space at the top are a stoop. Stoops were for poor people, you understand, and some people put little roofs over that little landing spot just so they could call it a porch instead.
Licking the bowl
Yes, we poor people had stoops. That's why my dad added a porch, so we wouldn't look quite so much like the white trash we really were. ;-)
Re: Licking the bowl
Date: 2003-12-05 07:52 am (UTC)Stoops: now that I think about it, I heard the "poor people" thing from the neighbors, never from my parents. (We had a front porch, a side stoop, and a back patio, by the way.)
Batter Beaters....
Date: 2003-12-05 07:56 am (UTC)There were 4 of us; two of us got a beater each, and mom drew a line down the bowl and the other two of us shared it.