What part of Maryland?? I grew up in Silver Spring (DC suburb) with a Baltimorean mother and never heard that.
Brings to mind a vision of appliances floating into the stratosphere…
In a small Massachusetts sandwich shop, I was once saved from a mistake by a local resident who told me that I probably did not want the milk shake I had just tried to order. A milk shake there would be milk and flavoring, shaken (not stirred?), with no ice cream.
If I wanted that with the ice cream mixed in, I needed to order a frappe.
I believe we’ve plowed this ground in umpteen threads, but it can be reiterated:
“Y’all” is ALWAYS plural. I’ve never heard it used to refer to an individual person (at least not by a Southerner - maybe by someone who wishes that he or she had been blessed to be born down here).
A few other examples:
- Has the mail gone? (meaning “Has the mail been delivered?”)
- What’s your ring? (meaning “What’s yout telephone number?” You don’t hear this too much anymore except coming from older people. It harkens back to when homes had distince telephone rings on party lines. Ours was two short rings, followed by two long rings.)
- You may also hear an old Southerner refer to “the icebox” meaning the refridgerator.
- My dad refers to his wallet as his “billfold” or “pocketbook.”
Big G - It was not until I attended university, just north of Chicago that I realized that 16-inch softball was not the norm of the universe. In fact, I was downright shocked to hear it was a purely Chicago phenomenon. I mean, yeah, I’ve seen softball on TV, but that wasn’t really softball. That was just baseball with a bigger ball. I just don’t get the point of non-clincher softball. That’s the whole point of softball - you don’t need mitts.
Another idiom that came to mind, several of my Glaswegian friends would always use the first person plural for the first person singular, as in “Could ye pass us the McEwan’s?” I occassionally catch myself using this odd construction. In Chicago, we also tend to use “youse” for the second person plural, or better still, “youse guys,” as in “How’s youse guys doin?” “Borrow” for “lend” is also very common.
I grew up in Philadelphia. Every summer, we’d go to the shore. (Meaning the Jersey shore.) No one ever went to the beach.
We ate hoagies and drank soda, although occasionally you’d hear an older person refer to a ‘grinder’. Older people also kept their food in ‘iceboxes’, although young people kept theirs in ‘the fridge’.
All highways warranted the use of a definite article, except for I-95. That was just ‘95’.
In south Philadelphia, (south of South Street) it was acceptable to greet friends with “Yo!”, but would draw looks from elsewhere in the city.
‘Youse’ is second person plural. “What are youse doin’?” It is pronounced ‘yuz’. Second person singular is always slurred to just “yuh”, sometimes spelled ‘ya’. “Whaddaya doin’?” Terminal g’s on the progressive tense form of verbs was always dropped.
We went swimmin’, we were eatin’, etc.
If you are a girl, and you have friends, they are your ‘girlfriends’. If you are a boy, and you are dating a girl, she is also your ‘girlfriend’. A boy would never refer to friends who were female as his girlfriends, only his actual girlfriend. But a girl had many girlfriends.
Any short ‘i’ sound that fell in the middle of a word became a long ‘e’ sound. We all thought those people from ‘Baldy-more’ had ‘atty-tude’ problems. (Not really, but it’s a good example.)
Prepositions can be added to the end of any sentence you like:
“Where’s it at?” “Can I come with?”
No ever ever saw anything. They always seen it. “I seen that!”
Philadelphians also needed to haul off before they hit somene. The mouth was also a favorite spot for hauling off and hitting someone: “I’ll punch yuh inna mouth!”
We put our groceries in a bag. But we didn’t buy groceries, we bought food. We went food-shoppin’ at the supermarket. Usually the supermarket was an Acme, pronounced “Aca-me”.
Breakfast, pronounced “brefis”, was eaten inthe morning, lunch was eaten in the middle of the day, and dinner in the evening. Supper and dinner were the same meal to us.
When I moved about 40 miles north of Philly in my late teens, ‘wuhter’ changed to ‘water’ and I had to start ‘warshing’ my clothes, my hair, the dog, etc. ‘Youse’ disappeared, as did ‘ya’, but people still drank soda, ate hoagies, and went to the shore.
Although I have heard a few older people are still drinking pop.
Ratty, I’ve always heard that as down the shore, as in “Are youse going down the shore this weekend?”
And of course that means going to the New Jersey beaches. If my friends and I in Delaware were “going to the beach”, we were going to the Delaware Beaches.
pulykamell, I definitely enjoyed playing softball that way. It was fun playing with no gloves and the giant heavy soft ball change the hitting a lot. Of course, somebody still managed to break thier hand catching a pop fly.
-G
got some irishisms.
yin and youse are of ulster/scots derivation.
“would youse all come in for your dinner or i’ll skelp the lot of ye!”
is a common cry on the streets of belfast.
it requires the kids to stop playing in the street and eat their dinner, before they get belted!
yin means one, and some old or rural people in ulster and parts of scotland will still count
“yin, twa,” etc.
the scots comedian Billy Connelly is known as “the big yin”.
you have to love certain dublin expression.
like hames (rhymes with james).
as in
“i’ve made a right hames of this”…i’ve badly messed up here.
many irish people still go to the “filums” (cinema).
a “glass” of beer is a half pint.
people always go “up” to the north, and “down” to the south.
the phrase “ach, sure, you wouldn’t want to be doing that now” is also a common substitue for “don’t do it that way.”
and “tea” in ireland can mean anything from the drink
(a wee cup of tea? ah go on, ye will,)
to a large meal of sandwiches, buns and cakes served to guests.
(will you stay for tea? i’ve a lovely sponge cake just out of the oven)
also “a drink” generally means an alcoholic one.
especially if it’s a “wee” drink!
a nice phrase i use often is “mad as toast” which is a belfastism, and means someone is lovably eccentric.
it is not to be confused with saying that someone is “away with the pixies/fairies” which can mean anything from slightly ditsy to full on dementia, depending on context.
A few more Southernisms.
"Down Yonder." For ‘down the road’.
Holler for Hollow, like “Yeah he lives down yonder in the holler.” I’m still not exactly what constitutes as a holler/hollow and I’m born and raised Southwest Virginian.
The ever popular ain’t. “I ain’t got none.” For the life of me I still can’t figure out what ain’t is supposed to be a contraction of.
Nary for none. “I didn’t see nary a trick or treater on Halloween.”
These here parts meaning “around this area”. “We don’t allow that kinda attitude around these here parts.”
And I notice we Southerners are especially bad about double (even triple!) negatives. “I don’t got no money.” “I ain’t never seen no bears around these here parts.”
And if someone ever asks you if you yon’t to they’re asking if you want to. “Yon’t to watch the race with me this Sund’y?”
A lot of the time you’ll hear days of the week pronounced like Sund’y, Mond’y, Tuesd’y, Wensd’y, Thursd’y, Frid’y and Saturd’y. The a is completely dropped from the last half of the word.
G’s are dropped off the end of words ending in ing. Goin’ to, fixin’ to, droppin’ by, leavin’ soon…
“I heard she was going to college now.” Heard pronounced as hEARrd, not ‘hurd’. My best friend’s mother is really bad for that one.
Reckon for I think so or suppose so like, “I reckon I’ll go church this Sund’y.”
Well I think I’ve covered enough Southernisms for now. These are the more common ones that I can think of right now but I’m sure there are more.
fizzestothetop, do you know of a small town called Grundy, Va? That is where my Dad is from & he says all of the things you mentioned - even after living in Ohio for the past 30 years! 
“hEARrd” especially.
Definetly hEARrd of Grundy. 
It’s about 2 and a half hours from where I live. My old highschool use to play (maybe they still do, I can’t remember) against Grundy in football. 
Small World
Use of the definitive pronoun for expressway numbers among those living in the Western New York and Ontario Golden Horseshoe area is quite common.
Buffalo: “Take the 33 west to the 90 south, then go to the 400 and take that to East Aurora.”
Toronto: “Take the 400 to the 401, then to the 402, then to the QEW, then to the 403, and then over to the 404.”
I’ve noticed that the phrase “Not for nuthin” seems to be a Brooklyn, NYC expression. Can also be expressed as “Not for nuthin’, but…”.
ex: Not for nuthin’, you might wanna avoid ticking her off - she’s had a bad day".
“Put up” does not mean “put away” out here in California, and I stumped more than a few students until I retaught myself. The first few times I said it, I’d always have one smart alecky kid hold whatever object I was referring to over his head until I said, “Excuse me, please put your books AWAY.”
Also, I’ve noticed that I have the phrase “el cheapo” in my vocabulary. I don’t know if it’s a family thing or a San Antonio thing or what. It’s completely idiomatic, since Spanish doesn’t put articles in front of adjectives. I’ve slipped and said that a couple of times in front of my kids. I’m working at removing it from my work vocabulary.
There are other phrases or words that have, thankfully, faded from regional dialects. My brother once gave my father a linguistic interview, describing objects and asking what their names were. One was a Y shaped stick with an elastic band secured to the tines of the Y, used to fire small objects at a high velocity. Instead of saying “slingshot,” like I expected, my dad answered “nigger-shooter,” and then just about died of embarrassment. How life has changed since Oklahoma in the 30s.
Well, I’m a Texan, and that isn’t quite the same as being a Southerner (except to Yanks and foreigners). But the joke isn’t true. Using “y’all” for 2P singular while very very unusual does happen once in a while. Using “all y’all” for 2P plural happens a lot more often, but it isn’t systematic… it’s used for emphasis.
For example, if I’m addressing half a dozen people asking them if they want drinks and I only expect a couple of them will, but all of them do, I might say “All y’all want drinks?” And of course if all my friends are laughing at me, you can count on hearing me say “fuck all y’all” because it rolls so beautifully off the tongue.
I disagree. I have heard it used that way, and have been directly addressed that way. And the people using it were most definitely Southern, unless Louisiana is in New England these days. I also wouldn’t recommend visitors try it on when talking to the locals, as it will come across as patronizing.
-fh
Well I once heard that in upstate NY, grilled hamburgers are called “steamed hams.” Of course, that’s a Utica expression, not used in Albany.
I didn’t know what an ottoman was for a long time. To me it was just a foot stool.
hazel-rah, Louisiana is Southern, but it’s differently Southern. They have a language all their own. In North Carolina, I don’t think I’ve ever heard “y’all” used for second person singular. I think what confuses the Yankees is that sometimes you can address one person as “y’all” as the representative of a group – if I ask a store clerk “Y’all got any more of these for sale?”, I mean “y’all” the whole store, not “you” the individual salesperson.
photopat, what else is an ottoman?
See, we didn’t use that word, so when I first heard it, apart from the Ottoman Empire, I didn’t know what it was.
I once was travelling with an American in S.E Asia and we were about to go to a busy market . I asked her if she had her passport etc safe. She said “Yes in my fanny pack”, thats what she said but what I heard was …“yes in the bag in my vagina” (ewwwww)
For the rest of the trip the fanny pack/bum bag was renamed the bag-round-your-waist.
I also pointed out that telling the customs officers that she kept her passport in her fanny pack was probably not a wise move unless she really really wanted a strip search.
In England, those are “catapults”. Another source of confusion for an American expat as, to me, a catapult is a large siege weapon that flings boulders (IOW, a trebuchet).