Colloquialisms and other expressions-- how are they used?

Parent Cafe
421

The phrase “I’ll give you something to cry about” sparked a rather unpleasant memory of my mother threatening to “whale the tar out of me.” @-)

I don’t remember actually being beaten, though, so it was all a lot of not very pc talk.

“Cheese it, it’s the cops!” we used to say a lot, although never when there were actually cops around. It was used more like “hurry up”!.

“Wicked pissa” was for something that was really great (also when I was a kid). That’s the phrase my kids make me say in a Boston accent when they want to prove to people that I grew up there. I know this sounds weird, but when I go back to MA people ask me where I’m from and then refuse to believe I’m from there, lol. My accent is green now.

422

Imo, boulevard would not be the correct term (see PizzaGirl’s post above).

But I did find this:

boul·e·vard strip
noun
a grassy strip between a road and a sidewalk.

423

I’ve always referred to it as the parking strip.

424

Around here we call it the swale. At least that’s what the city calls it when they prohibit parking on the swale.

425

I’m imagining a sign saying “No Parking on the Parking Strip”. No wonder they use swale instead.

:-?

426

When cars are cited in Honolulu, the police call it the sidewalk, although there is no asphalt or concrete and it often has dirt and/or some vegetation.

427

I think of a swale as being a low-lying, kind of soppy/wet/marshy area.

428

"I’m imagining a sign saying “No Parking on the Parking Strip”. "

As someone said, “we drive on parkways and park on driveways.”

429

Back to expressions-- to hurry up was “get a move on” or get a load out". I just heard an ad where hey used the expression “get out!” Meaning “no way”. We used to say “get outta here” or “get out!” Interchangeably.

430

Accompanied by a shove a la Julia Louis-Dreyfus on Seinfeld.

431

I think Stacey London of WNTW fame used to yell “get out” in fake disbelief showing her approval of the outfits picked by their makeover subjects. :slight_smile:

432

@Midwest67 and @nottelling I grew up in a suburb of Cleveland and we called it the tree lawn (and I’ve seen signs that say “no parking on tree lawn”). The land is owned by the city but maintained by the homeowner. The city planted trees along that strip of grass, so I would guess that’s where the term originated.
I didn’t know it was a local term until I met someone from another part of Ohio who always asked new acquaintances “What’s a tree lawn?” If you knew the answer, he knew you were from Cleveland.

433

I never really thought about it, but apparently there are many, many names for this strip, depending on the region.:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_verge

434

@MAOnemom – Interesting! I’m a Southern California native but my mom was born in Cleveland. So there’s a Cleveland connection to my use of the term.

435

MAOnemom, my husband grew up in Cleveland and uses “tree lawn.” I had not heard of the term before that.

436

Are you talking a very narrow strip of land? Like maybe a foot wide? Boulevard and parkway strike me as odd terms. I think I’ve heard it called a “median” in my neck of the woods.

437

We’ve also called it a median.

438

The Champs-Elysees counts as a boulevard. The Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Phila counts as a parkway. Grand and expansive!

439

We refer to the center thing (may be grass, may be cement, may be a wall) that divides the opposing lanes of traffic as the median.

440

That’s what a median is to me, too. If you cross a street, whatever you stop at in the middle (whether cement or grassy) is the median.

I don’t see how you would use median for a little strip of grass in between a sidewalk and street. But maybe some people do.