Meme question #1: for justawench
justawench asks: ...what are your favorite local idioms? I'm endlessly fascinated by the vagaries of the English language and colloquialisms.
I like this question! I can think of my absolute favorite right off the bat: "brook". As I understand it, people in my part of New England are the only Americans who use the term "brook" to mean a small running body of water. Seemingly everyone else says "stream" or "creek" and thinks "brook" sounds funny and la-di-da. This difference is supposed to have come over with the Pilgrims. Apparently the Mayflower colonists and the next couple of waves of English emigrants came from the same area in the south of England, including Windsor, wherever that is, and, also apparently, the people there say "brook" to this day. In Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor, there's a character called Mr. Ford who disguises himself at one point and goes by the name of Mr. Brook. Brook, ford, har har.
On the other hand, I can think of a couple of things which non-New Englanders claim are N.E.-isms, but which nobody ever actually says. For example, "the shore". I've heard it claimed that people in New England never speak of going to the beach but only to "the shore". In reality that's the silliest thing I've ever heard. We say "beach" just like everybody else.
I was just talking about this one with my mother: people in Dorchester, MA., where she was born, say "cocoa" whereas everyone else in the whole wide world says "hot chocolate". Mom says that when she first heard people saying "hot chocolate" she pictured a melted Hershey bar in a cup and was disappointed to find that it was just boring old cocoa again.
Then of course there's milkshakes. To me, "milkshake" means "ice cream mixed in a blender with milk and flavors". However, the term is a new one around here. Twenty or thirty years ago, "milkshake" meant "milk shaken up with flavor powders or chocolate syrup", and if you wanted what I think of as a milkshake you had to ask for a frappe. And purplegryphon tells me that in Rhode Island, if you want the ice-cream-milk-and-flavor version, you have to ask for a cabinet.
I like this question! I can think of my absolute favorite right off the bat: "brook". As I understand it, people in my part of New England are the only Americans who use the term "brook" to mean a small running body of water. Seemingly everyone else says "stream" or "creek" and thinks "brook" sounds funny and la-di-da. This difference is supposed to have come over with the Pilgrims. Apparently the Mayflower colonists and the next couple of waves of English emigrants came from the same area in the south of England, including Windsor, wherever that is, and, also apparently, the people there say "brook" to this day. In Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor, there's a character called Mr. Ford who disguises himself at one point and goes by the name of Mr. Brook. Brook, ford, har har.
On the other hand, I can think of a couple of things which non-New Englanders claim are N.E.-isms, but which nobody ever actually says. For example, "the shore". I've heard it claimed that people in New England never speak of going to the beach but only to "the shore". In reality that's the silliest thing I've ever heard. We say "beach" just like everybody else.
I was just talking about this one with my mother: people in Dorchester, MA., where she was born, say "cocoa" whereas everyone else in the whole wide world says "hot chocolate". Mom says that when she first heard people saying "hot chocolate" she pictured a melted Hershey bar in a cup and was disappointed to find that it was just boring old cocoa again.
Then of course there's milkshakes. To me, "milkshake" means "ice cream mixed in a blender with milk and flavors". However, the term is a new one around here. Twenty or thirty years ago, "milkshake" meant "milk shaken up with flavor powders or chocolate syrup", and if you wanted what I think of as a milkshake you had to ask for a frappe. And purplegryphon tells me that in Rhode Island, if you want the ice-cream-milk-and-flavor version, you have to ask for a cabinet.