@oldbrookie That’s how Edith pronounced toilet .
Grinder is used often up in NH, though sub is also used often.
I’ve always thought as water fountain as Midwestern. To me, bubbler is almost jarring, like hearing someone refer to soda as “pop.”
Talking of turns, how about “hang a Ralph” for right turn and “hang a Louie” for left turn? Midwest only or elsewhere?
in the NE we used “hang a Louie”. I had a friend who used to confuse her right and left, so she called it “making a watch”, since she wore watch on her left hand. I happen to be left handed and war my watch on my right hand,soe we were always challenged when she gave me directions!
There’s also rotary/roundabout/traffic circle. I use “rotary.”
"To me, bubbler is almost jarring, like hearing someone refer to soda as ‘pop.’ "
My mother told me the first time she went to visit a sibling in the northeast, up from the south, she walked into a store and asked for some ‘pop’.
The guy behind the counter, she said, looked nervously about, leaned in and said to her, “Little lady, we don’t sell that stuff here.”
My mother was astonished, “You don’t sell pop in the corner store? What kind of place is this?”
They finally figured it out, and they both laughed really hard, probably as hard as she did in the retelling.
I didn’t say they were only Boston words, but were used there. In Wisconsin? No one knew what we were talking about and we didn’t understand them either. They didn’t know what dungerees were, didn’t know that a ‘regular coffee’ had nothing to do with size, but with cream and sugar. And of course everything we said was in a thick Boston accent and without 'R’s, so they didn’t understand that my brother’s name was Robert, not Robbit. When they were saying Aunt, we heard ‘Ant’ and really couldn’t understand why they were taking about ants. Roof was ‘ruff’, creek was ‘crick’. After about a year, we kids were reformed, by my parents weren’t. Still aren’t.
This was a time when there wasn’t much TV and we had never heard the other words for the items we we used. We’d mostly watched local kids shows (Romper Room or Bozo) and they talked like we talked.
Arggh for the typos!!! Say… that reminds me…when is national "talk like a pirate"day this year?
Romper room and Bozo the clown didn’t have Boston accents in NY!
September 19
When I lived in Massachusetts I didn’t hear the term “grinder” much in Boston, but it was quite common in Providence, Worcester, and on up into New Hampshire, used to describe a sandwich on a long roll. More specifically, a grinder was usually a “hot oven grinder,” i.e., an oven-heated sandwich, like a meatball grinder, but it could be a sandwich of just cold cuts and cheese run through the oven. In Boston it was usually a “sub” whether served hot or cold. Or just a “meatball sandwich” even if heated in an oven and served on a long roll.
In Philadelphia, a sandwich of cold cuts and cheese on a long roll is a “hoagie,” though this term seems more closely associated with various Italian meats and cheeses. And while a Philadelphian would never confuse a “cheese steak” with a “hoagie,” to a Worcesterite a cheese steak might appear to be just a kind of steak and cheese grinder, albeit cooked on the grill and not in an oven.
It’s a po’boy.
thanks, @stevensmama!
Thanks, @bclintonk I am now craving a hoagie or a cheese steak! There aren’t too many places here in LA where they are as good as the ones in Philly!
"In Wisconsin? No one knew what we were talking about and we didn’t understand them either. "
They didn’t know what a lollipop or a baby carriage was?
Pocketbook is an old-fashioned word, IMO, but I don’t think of it as regional, just older (what today we call a purse or handbag).
And I thought Wisconsin was the only state that used the word bubbler. As I stated many posts ago, it is a very handy word that described clean water that bubbled up from the device. Two multisyllabic words is cumbersome.
You turn on the blinker for the turn signal in WI as well.
You eat supper every night, dinner is a fancier meal usually served midday on Sunday. Sunday supper used to be a light meal, often fixing whatever you wanted, when you wanted it in our house. “What’s for supper?” was a late afternoon question, never dinner.
Ah, yes, a po’ boy, a venerable New Orleans term. To my mind, though, a po’ boy is usually filled with deep-fried seafood. You can find a similar dish in New England—a clam roll, consisting of fried clams on a split-top hot dog bun. A lobster roll, however, is never fried. It’s either a cold lobster salad (Maine-style) or hot lobster meat drenched in lemon butter (Connecticut-style), in either case on a split-top hot dog bun.
I thought the defining characteristic of a po’ boy was fried oysters? Is that not true? And what about a muffaletta (sp?)? Lots of cold cuts and olive oil weighed down with a weight so that you can get it in your mouth? Is that correct?
Blinkers and U-ies appear to be nationwide; we have 'em here in California, too.
You can have a fried shrimp po’ boy, or a fried crawfish po’ boy, or a fried catfish po’boy, or a (fried) softshell crab po’ boy.
You correctly describe a muffuletta, @nottelling, but the distinctive features of a muffuletta are that it is made from a round Italian bread and features an olive salad along with the Italian cold cuts and cheese.