A chicano from Los Angeles told me about “buey,” which also sheds the first letter. Literally, it’s “ox,” he said, but it also means fool, idiot, or asshole. :eek:
In these parts, we don’t see “togs” much, and when we do, it is often for cold-weather children’s clothes, in catalogs.
A great big rain is a “gulley washer” or “golly woosh.” Also “rainin’ like a cow pissing on a flat rock,” or “rainin’ like a flat rock.”
I’ve read the first part of this thread and this page. There’s a piece in the middle I haven’t yet seen.
I’ve heard munk / monk on - sulking, as you say, but also meaning in a foul mood. Round these parts (East Midlands) we say ‘cob on’, with the same meaning.
Other words from my neck of the woods:
Nesh - cold.
Snided - crowded
Whappy - mad / loony
Twitchell - alley.
A generic Northern thing would be using ‘on’ instead of, er, ‘of’ (‘I’ve had enough on this’)
Still thiking of old-timey Southernisms (Don’t know if they were used elsewhere):
piss ant: someone who is beneath contempt (but you’ll give them some anyway) “That little piss ant threatened to sue me.”
banty rooster: someone who’s small but has a lot of fight in him
eat up with: infested or infected with, as in “He’s eat up with fleas,” or “He’s eat up with the chicken pox,” or (humorously) “That boy’s eat up with the dumbass.”
shit-ass: Also a person who is (almost) beneath contempt.
slough (pronounced slue): used to refer to a swampy area or river backwater. “He’s down in the slough, frog-gigging.” “Slue” is an alternate spelling. My dad used to call people whose name he couldn’t remember “Sluefoot,” and sluefoot (sometimes slewfoot) is used in nicknames as in “Sluefoot Sue” or “Sluefoot Bob.” I’m not sure what “sluefoot” means or is supposed to convey. I think “Sluefoot” (in various spellings) is also used as a name for the devil.
grinds: genital area (maybe a corruption of groin?) My very proper and religious grandmother used this one, to the amusement of her daughter-in-law (my mother).
She only meant that she had a sudden and urgent need to poop. Apparently “envie de kaka” is a common way of expressing this feeling in Canadian French.
Because of the context (upscale mall setting,) at first I thought it had to do with an obscure Freudian theory of materialism. And she was so earnest about it.
“Poop envy.”
It’s about to put me in hysterics again, here at my desk. Mon dieu, tabernac!
My mom was from Saskatchewan, and this was also a word there, with the same meaning. I have a strange feeling that it might have been pronounced “sluff”, though.
And I always thought that “piss ant” was one word: “pissant”, and was ultimately some kind of verb form from the French, kind of like “dormant” (= “sleeping”). As two words it doesn’t really make sense: what do ants have to do with pissing? Unless you’re pissing on them?
Chunder is also very Australian. To wit, the lyrics of Land Down Under:
[Men at Work]“I come from a land down under
Where beer does flow and men chunder
Can’t you hear, can’t you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover.”[/Men at Work]
Other quaint words for vomiting include ralphing, yodelling and talking to God on the big white telephone.
