An idle Sunday project, but I’m making a list . . .
I’ve got a guy that works with me, and he’s from Southern NJ (“South Jersey”). He calls 'em “hoagies”, and I call 'em “subs”.
My girlfriend from North Dakota on the other hand, calls it “pop”, when I call it “soda”. [sub]It’s “soda”. “Pop” is my father.[/sub]
One of my buddies from college, a Texan, vehemently explained to me that “grits” refers to food in general (kinda like talking about “vittles” or “chow”). However when presented with this fact, a guy I work with from Alabama is just as equally vehement that “grits” are ground corn that you boil.
I know there’s more out there. What else am I missing?
Well, a “chili dog” down South is a hot dog with chili on it. I get mine with mustard and onions. And cole slaw. Yes, cole slaw. People in the South eat hot dogs with ketchup on them.
A “chili dog” up North is usually served on a plate. It is a hot dog on a bun with loads of onions, mustard, and so much chili that the only way you could it it with your HANDS is over a SINK. Ketchup is anathema to the Northern chili dog.
In the North, “having a barbecue” is having friends over and putting a few things on the grill and drinking a lot.
In the South, “having a barbecue” is firing up a bunch of beef and/or pork barbecue and letting it slowly ooze into itself all day. Then friends come over and you offer buns and condiments, and everyone eats a fuckload of barbecue and drinks a lot. Potato salad and baked beans are legally required at a barbecue.
In the South, when you have what the North calls a barbecue, you “cook out.” Or, if you’re moneyed Southerners, you “put a few things on the grill.”
Grits are cooked corn hominy - sort of the consistency of oatmeal, but in smaller chunks and it’s not gross and gooey. I have never heard anyone refer to “vittles” or “grub” as “grits.”
Another one is that my dad, from New York, says “on line” as in, “I went to the post office and had to stand on line for an hour.” People in Los Angeles seem to say “in line” instead.
Despite the nefarious aims of the evil Subway chain to make all Americans call such sandwiches ‘subs’, what you have there is properly called a ‘grinder’. This is a similar campaign to the tragically successful one waged by McDonalds to replace all ‘egg-creams’, ‘cabinets’ and ‘frappes’ with ‘milkshakes’. Only a few brave Yankees in Boston are managing to hold out against that one. (I’m from Southern CT, btw)
You are, of course, correct. I’m constantly having to correct my beloved Bluesman, who is originally from Fort Worth. He seems to think one calls a sweetened carbonated beverage ‘coke’. As in, “What kind of coke do you want?” “I’ll have an orange, thanks.”
There’s also the problem of what to call it when you put all your unwanted junk out in front of your house in the hopes that someone might take it away and maybe even give you money. Where I come from, this is known as a ‘Tag sale’, but when I went to our last military housing office to get permission to hold one, they looked at me blankly when I used the term. The prevailing term in the military community seems to be ‘Yard sale’. I’m trying to correct this misperception, though, unfortunately, without much success.
Oh, I forgot to mention another good one. In what seems to be a term unique to the CT area, the place one goes when one wants adult beverages is a ‘package store’, which is shortened to ‘packie’. When I was in California at tech school many moons ago and in need of said beverages, I inquired as to where the nearest ‘packie’ was. I got looked at like I had two heads.
I live in Savannah, GA, and subs are, well, subs. Grits is a particular food not a general term.
We have “yard sales” or “garage sales” if we have them at our homes. Churches sometimes have “tag sales”.
“Soda” is any soft drink, although some older folks may call them a “cold drink”. I always refer to them by their brand name depending on what the fast food place sells.
I’m bilingual (Southern NJ-born to Southern NJ-born parents, but Midwest raised), and I’m constantly confused. It always takes a linguistic adjustment period when I go to visit family. “Soda” in the Midwest (or at least in the Chicago area) means an ice-cream soda, never a straight soft drink. If you try to order an “egg cream” in Chicago, you will get a blank stare. “Hoagie,” “sub,” and “grinder” are all the same to me, but it’s almost always “sub” in Chicago, except (oddly) on my elementary school’s printed hot lunch menu, where it was “hoagie” (obviously typed by a displaced East Coast native).
When I went to college in NY, it took me forever to get used to people talking about “standing on line” as opposed to “standing in line.” I still have to suppress the urge to correct them.
Okay I will add the rural Ohio take on this. It’s a pizza. It’s a sub if it’s bigger than a normal two slices of bread sandwhich. It’s pop, it’s a soda if you want to put some ice cream in it. Pies are only made with fruit or berry. Grits are a horrid breakfast side item and food is called either food or chow here. Up here it is a yard sale, I have never heard of a tag sale.
Where I’m from (Near Chattanooga, TN), the wheeled contraptions you put your groceries when at a supermarket are called buggies. Where I am now, (Lincoln, Nebraska), they seem to be called shopping carts.
Pepsi, Coke, Mountain Dew, 7-Up, Cactus Cooler—these are all the brand names of various soft drinks. That’s what they are.
My toes curl up in irritation when I hear them called “pop.” Ugh.
Growing up in the Los Angeles area, my family always called these beverages “soft drinks.” It seems to me that others around us called them either “soft drinks” or “soda.” No one called them “pop.” Because that would be lame.
Some friends of ours had parents from Ohio or some such place, and the kids insisted on calling these beverages “pop.” Even at age 10, when I first heard this vile slang, I knew it was wrong. And it just irritated me.
I call the small leather (or fabric) thing in which I hold my spare change and driver’s license to be a wallet. But apparently some people on the East Coast call this a “pocketbook.” For some unearthly reason.
That’s a change purse back home. Wallets are what men stick in their back pockets to hold their bills. It’s also occasionally called a billfold.
Also, I agree with anyone saying that pop is an abomination. It’s soda, damn it. Even Coke as a catch-all for soft drinks is better than pop, which is musical genre.
How about mangoes as an alternate for bell peppers? Have asked several, elderly, Midwestern folk, which is where I heard this, and none of them knew where it came from. Poke, instead of a bag or sack. Remember the phrase, “A pig in a poke”? Another odd one is “carry me”, meaning to transport me via automobile.
I totally forgot about the Southern-esqe “coke” thing. Funny story: I was down in Montgomery, AL on a business trip [sub]Lucretia, I’m sure you know the hell that is ASBC[/sub], and myself and a few friends went out to dinner one night. We found it amusing when the waitress asked us, “What kind of ‘coke’ would you like with that, honey?”
But I never heard of “grinders”. Are they distinctly different from subs/hoagies? For that matter, and on a slight hijack:
[hijack]
What in particular is a “gyro”? Is it pronounced GYE-roah, like in “gyroscope” or is it HE-ro, like Superman? I vaguely remember seeing pictures of them, and they look like pita bread stuffed with . . . well, stuff. Are these “grinders”?
[/hijack]
And I just got back from the store, and I got a new one to throw at you: When they bag your groceries, do you want a “bag” or a “sack”?
Tripler
I told the guy, “Dude, it’s a case of beer. It doesn’t go into a ‘sack’.”
According to my buddiy at a Mediterranean restaurant, “gyro” is a greek word and somewhat hard for Americans to pronounce correctly. It is more similar to “hero” but with an odd sort of rasping “g” sound to the first syllable…somewhat similar to the sound you make when pronouncing the “ke” part of Marrakesh.
Grocery containment device: bag. I used to bag groceries. The store I worked in was frequented by Northerners who retired to Savannah and they would ask for sacks sometimes.
Covering for the head: cap if it has a semi-circular bill in the front, otherwise it’s a hat
Neither, it’s pronounced “yee-ro” (being Greek and all), in both the singular and plural forms, and it’s sort of like a souvlaki.
AFAIK, a grinder and a sub and a hoagie and a hero are all the same thing. It just depends on where you live. In Ontario, Canada, they’re subs, and here in Florida as well. I’d never seen a “po-boy” until I came here, though. That’s a sandwich of any of dozens of kinds, on a French roll, grilled and pressed as flat as it will go. Yum! Do they have those elsewhere, called by a different name?
Also in Ontario, possibly in much or all of Canada, “soda” is what you put in Scotch, and Coke and Mountain Dew et.al. are “pop”. And up there, shopping carts are buggies, too.