That’s me. Mrs Piper eventually made the same adjustment when giving me driving instructions.
You left the words “unbelievably nasty-tasting” out of your otherwise excellent description. 
I was dumbfounded that something so familiar could be altered so much by such a small and simple change in preparation. :eek:
"It lacks a quarter of an hour to being six o’clock’ became shortened to “It’s a quarter to six”.
I don’t think I’ve heard anyone express time in quarters since I learned how to tell time in the 70s. Even before digital watches.
I agree. A quarter of eight is two. How can 7:45 be two?
I know a woman who has to hold her hands up, palms facing away from her, then trace the “L” formed by her left fingers-thumb in order to know that it’s her left hand.
My first thought was pineapples. My second was peanuts. My first college roommate was from Peachtree City, GA and still thought peanuts grew on trees. WTF?
ETA - I do, er, sometimes have to mentally think “left hand makes the L.”
We just call it the electric company or electric utilities. Or, in my town, we call it the city bill since the electric utility is owned by the city and gets billed along with the water, sewer and garbage.
My contribution is that people don’t know you generally should never walk closely behind a horse.
When ostrich were a thing, maybe 20 years ago, I helped a neighbor trailer one of his males to an equine vet clinic where the bird had an X-ray done.
One of the horse vets there was standing right in front of the bird. I grabbed his elbow and told him, “you don’t need to show off how brave you are” and led him behind the animal. Turns out he was used to horses and didn’t know ostriches kick forward and have a toenail that can eviscerate a person.
Poppycock, I know my foot from my hand, and I know my ear from my nose, similarly I know my right from my left.
It never occurred to me that everyone doesn’t say quarter of the hour. half past the hour. Its even got a similar expression in Spanish. I recall studying how to express time in Spanish I.
Are their really people that don’t? its so obvious that you’re dividing the clock face into 4 slices, like a pie.
I’ve never used the phrase ‘quarter of’ in my life and don’t know anyone that does.
As has been said, it is pretty ambiguous. When you say ‘quarter of’, I have no idea if you mean ‘quarter to’ or ‘quarter after’.
Add me to the list of people who didn’t know that some people didn’t know the phrase “quarter of 7.”
There was a startlingly large number of people in a college astronomy class that didn’t know the seasons occurred because the Earth is tilted. 38% or something. Apparently most of them thought the Earth’s slightly elliptical orbit was the reason instead. “Doesn’t it move closer and farther away from the sun?”
I tried to give them the benefit of the doubt and supposed that when they were taught this at age 8 they weren’t paying much attention and the teacher did a poor job of explaining light physics. So they filed a half-assed explanation like, “the top part is farther away from the sun, therefore winter” as, “the whole Earth moves away from the sun, therefore winter” instead.
And after that, when do 99% of people ever need to think about the cause of seasons or have it come up in conversation so they can get corrected on it?
It’s a strange usage even in western Canada. None of my relatives from there has ever called it that, and in fact, the last time I was visiting my uncle in Calgary, he had me look at some electrical problem in his basement, so I know damn well he didn’t call it “hydro” or I would have said some form of “WTF?” and he’d have had to explain.
Both of my sets of grandparents referred to a fifteen minute time segment as ‘the quarter hour’, with 30 mins being ‘the half hour’, with 45 minutes being ‘the quarter til the hour’. I always assumed it was a regional thing, being that both grandparents lived in contiguous cities, but perhaps it was more of a generational thing.
The other day someone asked me which way to turn an item to tighten it, and I came out with the ‘righty tighty lefty loosey’ saying I’d grown up with. They looked at me as though I’d sprouted an extra eye in the middle of my forehead. Evidently that is NOT something the millenials use.
I didn’t realize until fairly recently that:
There are people who believe that New Mexico is not a US state
There are people who believe that the US has more than 50 states (52 is the number I remember hearing)
There are people who believe that Hawaii is not a US state OR
that Hawaii is the 52nd state
People think everyone in Kansas and Nebraska lives on a farm.
I grew up hearing “quarter of.” Never gave it much thought before now. We probably say it for the same reason we drop r’s in places where they belong, and insert them in places where they don’t. It’s because we’re fast talkers up here, and being able to say, “It’s quarter o’ six,” just rolls off the tongue easier than dealing with that T sound.
Is everyone clear that the confusing thing about “quarter of 7” is not the use of “quarter” to mean 15 minutes–it’s the use of the preposition “of”?
Most of us understand “a quarter to 7,” or “a quarter 'til 7,” to mean 15 minutes before 7 o’clock. And we likewise understand “a quarter after 7” to mean 15 minutes after 7 o’clock. That 15 minutes is “a quarter of an hour,” that the clock face is being divided into four parts, is entirely clear.
The problem is that there is no logical meaning for the word “of” that indicates whether it refers to before or after the hour. So “a quarter of 7” could plausibly mean either 6:45 or 7:15, and there is no obvious semantic way to figure out which one is meant.
Same. I never realized it was a regionalism.