Growing up in the South (Oklahoma and Texas), I somehow learned lots of different terms for the same thing. For instance:
Couch, Sofa, Divan, Davenport:
Dresser, Bureau, Dresser Drawers, Chiffarobe:
There’s only one breakfast, but you can eat lunch or dinner at noon, and dinner or supper in the evening.
Refrigerator and icebox are synonyms.
Soft drink, soda, soda water, soda pop, pop, coke:
Pipe wrench or monkey wrench:
Spoiled milk was soured, curdled, or blinky, but if it was done deliberately, it was called “clabbered milk”.
Pickup truck instead of pickup or truck.
I know there are other Southernisms I’m forgetting, like Sweet Tea, and putting redskin peanuts in your “coke”.
When I moved to Colorado, after a lifetime on the East Coast, almost the first thing I did was go into a supermarket (which btw they called a “grocery store”) and get myself a single bottle of soda.
To my utter and complete amazement, the pretty teenager at the checkout said to me, “Pop in the sack?” which, where I come from, meant something like “Would you like to go to bed with me?”
Ever cool, I responded, “WHAT???!!?”
She repeated herself.
I looked at her quizzically. Gosh, they are awfully friendly out here, I thought.
The next few weeks, I made a point of getting single bottles of soda at various “grocery stores”, just for the pleasure of getting asked that question.
My father’s parents, originally from Beaver Meadow/Hazleton, PA now in Bridgeton, NJ (South Jersey) do that too:
They used to buy 35mm fill-um.
Pop-pop would talk about the atonic power plant.
They would both tell me about the Lost Dutchman Mine in the Superstitious Mountains east of Mesa, AZ.
Rhubarb, you reminded me of something I’ve only seen up in North Dakota/Minnesota . . .
[another slight hijack]
Talk about putting peanuts in your coke, there are actually people who put a shot of Clamato or V-8 in their beer!. And they like it!!
[/another slight hijack]
I’ve always known the refridgerator as the bottom part, and the icebox as the top part. The 'fridge keeps your stuff cold, and the icebox keeps my chicken breasts frozen.
Bureau is a department of the government. Dresser is where I keep my clothes.
Monkey wrench and pipe wrench are the same things.
Interstates were never known as “I - 287”. All the highways were “Route 287” or “Route 17” (sounding like “root” instead of “rout”).
Tripler
I’ve never heard of a ‘smaller’ Mack Truck. The people at International might get upset if they heard this.
Wow, I’d forgotten about this. We had a ‘way back’ in our vehicles, too.
Here in NJ/NY a meterological expression I’ve noticed recently is the “real feel” temperature; i.e. it’s 15 degrees out, but the real feel is minus 2. I don’t know if that’s a regionalism or not, but I love the term.
We go to Hero Haven and buy our heros and soda.
Mrs. Chastain is originally from Chicago, and I’m originally from St. Louis.
The missus will frequently refer to getting “a can of pop.” I would rather open an umbrella up my own sphincter than refer to it as anything but soda. Amazing how much difference a few hundred miles can make in dialect.
Of course, she also calls it “a caaan of paahp,” which makes me laugh even more. 
I believe that’s a term coined and perhaps trademarked by AccuWeather.com.
Another one for ya: in Yonkers, NY (or I should say, among most Italian-Americans I know from southern Westchester County), it’s a wedge. As in, I ordered a 3-ft. wedge from the deli. Yes I know it sounds uncomfortably close to “wedgie,” but what can I tell you? No one I know outside the area seems to have heard this term.
This New Yorker is also used to standing on line in the supermarket, at the movies, etc.
Tossing one out here: My sister and I were on vacation in Bar Harbor, Maine, and struck up a conversation with a shop owner. He was surprised to hear we were from NYC, as we didn’t have the stereotypical Brooklyn/SI accent. While we looked at some of the jewelry he had on display, I made a comment to my sister about a necklace that looked gaudy. The shop owner jumped in to say that now he could tell for sure we were New Yorkers, because no one else would use that word. So, how would everyone else describe something that you thought was overly showy/ornate or colorful to the extreme?
The alternative is that you get asked, “Is that all?” Like I’m not doing my bit to stimulate the economy. 
I love this thread…
I cant even tell you how often I would get annoyed with my friend from Indiana (im born and raised in Southern California) everytime she would use the word pop… when we first met it took me awhile to catch what she was talking about.
I dont know if anyone can relate on this but there are a ton of people out here who refer to **cigarettes as “grits” ** (but “grits” is also the word for that nasty milky breakfast food). “Butts” is a common one in New England for cigarettes ive noticed although plenty of people use that one I guess…
Another weird one- although I think may be used only in my family- the remote control for the TV in our house was always called “the box”… I know, very weird. Anyone else use that by chance?? 
I haven’t seen anyone in this thread link to the Harvard (that’s Haahvaahd to some) dialect survey. Up until a few months ago, you could take a long (but fun!) quiz of your particular speech along with your geographic place of origin to help them map U.S. dialect patterns. The survey is now closed – they claim to have a new one up sometime in the future – and you can now view the results.
You can look at a particular word, phrase or pronounciation and see where it occurs most commonly on a map. Worth taking a look, and a good example of how to use the Internet effectively, IMHO.
Again, born and raised in Cali- I know no one who calls the grocerie store a “market”… Its the grocerie store, or just store.
Also, being that I actually live in San Diego, Ive been watching the San Diego Real World. A southern girl on the show refers to a Northern guy as a ‘yankee’. I realize the history of the term of course, but is that commonly used in the South? Primarily as an insult??
BTW- Its always- ALWAYS a wallet!! Male, female, back pocket, purse etc- its always a wallet. Pocketbook or coin purse sounds like something out of the 30’s.
In Nebraska, the device that you lean over to take a drink of water from is a ‘drinking fountain’ - My friend in Wisconsin refers to these as “bubblers” (which I’d never hear of).
We (in Nebraska) also use Koozie’s to keep our cans of pop/soda cold…to her, they are called ‘can coolers’…
Also the ‘bag’ and ‘sack’ are different I guess.
Kansas City, born and raised. Parents are St Louis born and raised.
Here in KC it’s pop, but that’s an abomination. It is properly known as soda. Ice Cream Soda has, you guessed it, ice cream in it. Saying soda and getting ice cream in it is a northern thing, not a midwest. My parents lived in Michigan for a year and got ice cream when asking for soda. Here it’s a float (as in a Root Beer Float).
Sub or hoagie (usually sub if storebought, hoagie if homemade). Grinder only if it has ground meat (as in meatballs or sausage). Poor Boys (pronounced Po’ Boys) are cajun food.
Wallet. Grocery Store or just The Store.
Plastic is a sack or bag. Paper is a bag if big (like in grocery stores) sack if small (like for a lunch). Sack is also a verb as in: I sack things in a plastic bag.
Shopping carts, hats, drinking fountains.
Real feel is wind chill.
Pizza, liquor store, garage or yard sale depending on where it is actually held.
Grits are delicious if instant and made properly. Restaurant/southern grits are nasty.
I tried to do a paper in a Linguistics class on this subject but I didn’t have enough of a diverse population to interview. I did a paper on film jargon instead.
Some drinking fountains years ago in the midwest were like miniature decorative fountains – the nozzle, pressure and air bubbles produced a short vertical column of water that spread out at the top. They were, indeed, “bubblers”; it’s easy to see how they got that name.
Pop. Very rare to hear “soda”.
Conczepts –
I assure you that I’m not whooshing you. The reference to “spendy” being a West Coast phenomenon is even cited in Allan Metcalf’s book on American regional English, “How We Talk,” Houghton Mifflin, 2000. Spendy gets its own excerpt on p. 133 – and it even quotes our local golf course up here in Mukilteo.
The book also gives Washingtonians (of the Seattle variety) credit for:
- YEAH as a strong affirmative agreement to respond to a statement:
“She’s a fox.”
“YEAH-she is.” - being able to differentiate between sockeye, coho, chinook, springs, chum and every other species/stage of salmon.
Best regards,
Mooney252
“Soda” is something you mix with alcohol or use to brush your teeth. I drink pop.
A sub is one type of sandwich, usually with cold cuts, then (hopefully) heated.
A hoagie is a long sandwich with one or more ground beef patties.
Wallets are carried by both men and women. Women often carry their wallets in a purse.
Anything you wear like a hat is a hat. There are varieties of hats, like ballcaps, fedoras, cowboy hats, but all are hats first.
We didn’t have a “way back,” we had a rumble seat. Even when there wasn’t a seat. Weird.
We’ve got markets and then we have grocery stores. That’s pronounced GROshree. There, I navigate carts up and down the aisles, trying not to let anyone run over my tennis shoes, then stand in line to pay and get my groceries put in bags.
When I want to use an electrical device, I plug it in to the wall. My husband, from Kentucky, plugs it up, instead. He also goes to the store, drinks soft drinks instead of pop, and is an all-around weird fellow.
Julie
Went to Ohio once and ordered a soda in a resturant. The waitress brought me an ice cream soda. My cousin had to explain that I meant pop.
Pop is actually my father-in-law.
My mother moved from Brooklyn, NY, more than 40 years ago. She still says “make out the light” instead of “turn off the light.”
I’ve lived in San Diego for 10 years and I’ve never heard that. If they’re not cigarettes, they’re “cigs”. I remeber “butts” being more common on the east coast, but I hear it from time to time.
See, I learned that “pocketbook” and “purse” are interchangeable. And a “wallet” is something roughly the size of a deck of cards or two, which actually holds the money or checks.
Now here’s one for debate: Is it “faucet”, “spigot”, or “tap”? Personally, I get beer from a ‘tap’, and drinking water from my kitchen ‘faucet’, If I want to wash the truck or hose off the dog, I screw the hose to the “spigot”. I’ve been raised that they aren’t necessarily interchangeable.
Tripler
Now I’m thinking of other regional words I’ve come across. . .