Last Updated on: 25th March 2018, 10:21 am
And now Gill with some more regional expressions. Also, I have this song in my head thanks to her post title.
Depending on where you are from in this great big spinning ball of chaos you might call certain items certain things that may sound strange to someone in another part of the world, or even with in your own country.
- Bin – For this we hang out with our British friends. What we over here call a garbage can they call a rubbish bin.
- Lightning bugs dragon flies – If you live above the Mason Dixon line you call these bugs dragon flies, or sometimes lightning bugs. But our southern friends, like my late great friend Eric, would always call them lightning bugs.
- Musk melon – My late great friend and I had a debate over what we called honey dew. I was always brought up to call it musk melon, to which the late great Eric responded by telling me just how “country” I was and that any “normal` person called it honey dew.
- Lori – Back across the pond we go. Here in North America we call them jeeps or trucks, but our British and Australian friends call them Loris.
Question
Are there any interesting regional slangs from where you are?
I got an email about this post from Martin. It said “Yup, from where I grew up (Western New Brunswick and New England, we use the term Dooryard to indicate property outside the house. If you have read Stephen King, he uses the term in his Dark Tower Series.” I’m having visions of that word in a song, but I can’t figure out which one it was in. This post reminds me of a story I read when I was a kid called “Moose Jaw Maggie”. Does anyone else remember it? A girl from Moose Jaw Saskatchewan came over to England and they were making fun of her for her funny words. That’s all I remember. It also reminds me of an exchange I had with my first orientation and mobility instructor when I was about 6. She was the one I later called “Scary Jane” from the Babs journals, and she was very British. One day she told me to go get my trainers on. I had no idea what she was talking about.
Dooryard is a new one on me. And I can’t say I’ve heard that story, either.