“Surety”: the money you put down when you rent an apartment. What the rest of the US calls “security deposit.”
I grew up using the word “boughten” to differentiate between store-bought and homemade. The first time I used “boughten bread” in a sentence to my husband he looked at me like I was from Mars.
A lot of people are of Finnish ancestry up here. There’s a trace of Finn in our English - we tend to drop articles and prepositions: “We go Green Bay” instead of “We’re going to Green Bay.”
I’m sure I can come up with more, but that’s what first spring to mind.
Maybe it’s a Catholic thing? (Of course, that theory would be shot down if it turns out you are Catholic). You’ll see them listed in the Gusto fairly often during the summer. Here’s a web site for a lawn fete in Depew (also featuring chiavettas, spelled incorrectly of course).
I remember hearing the term “ankle biter” in southern Ontario. It referred to an irritating child.
I also remember “this aft” well enough.
One I do recall from living in Toronto was that Toronto had ends: West End, East End, North End. No South End, since that was the lake. But where other cities had “sides” (West Side, for example), Toronto had “ends.” Also in Toronto, street directions always come after the street name: Queen Street East, Bloor Street West, and so on. Never “East Queen Street.” These examples may not be unique to Toronto, but they do seem unusual for many North American cities.
My guess, and purely a guess, is that regions where peppers are called chile are cultures heavily influenced by the Spanish language. Chile, in Mexico, refers to either the pepper or the sauce made out of the pepper. It would not surprise me if Chile, the country, is named for its skinny pepper-like shape.
That one’s used in Britain, also as a dismissive term about a short person.
London has west and east ends (not north or south). ‘The West End’ is the parallel to ‘Broadway’ in its theatrical context. Some other British cities have ends, too, Glasgow coming to mind (again, just east and west). The southern part of a village in Essex grew into the seaside town of Southend-on-Sea. There’s also Preston North End football club.
stob - a stump, especially said of plants like harvested corn stalks, that make it hard to walk through a field. Seems to be local to border states. (Kentucky, Tenn)
We used to say “gocchies” for underwear when I was a slightly-older kid in Whitby, Ontario. I wonder whether that’s related. I always thought it was an Italian word.
I technically am Catholic, but my family moved onto other things before I could have any real memory of it. Of course, now they’ve come full circle and have gone back…but anyway, that could be it. I’m not actually in the city itself, so that could also be an explanation.
The primarily Southern U.S. word “tump” is rare in that it fills a much needed niche succinctly for a such a commonly needed usage and yet it isn’t mainstream.
There are several near synonyms like overturn, turn over, spill, or tip. However, the word tump combines the idea of spilling something with the idea of it being accidental or wreckless.
ex: “Stop that kid before he tumps over my vase”.
You can say the same thing in standard English but it is rather awkward. I know several Yankees, including my wife that were exposed to the word tump and kept it for themselves because it tends to be pretty useful.
I’m usually wary of these things - inevitably some little place somewhere overseas uses things i think are local to my area - I have even heard “G’day” is used in some places in America - but I’d need clarification on that.
Do people anywhere else start sentences with “Yeah no”, meaning “I see where you are coming from, but I politely disagree”?
Adam Sandler did that a lot in Punch Drunk Love. Is it common in Australia? Maybe the writer or director of that movie was Australian? I haven’t heard many Americans saying that in normal conversation, though.
Where I come from we have a few unique words … in fact, a whole dictionary of them.
I suppose many of them are regionalisms, unique to one particular area and not truly island-wide. Also, many of the words in the book are not widely used today (indeed were never widespread to begin with), which is maybe the reason someone thought it would be a good idea to write them down.