Heck, I’m 42, and I’ll still sometimes just call it a “tin” without the “can” part even. ETA: most often in the case of sardines or other fish that comes in those types of containers. Never called it anything else, in fact.
True. And when I checked the Dictionary of American Regional English I didn’t find an entry for tin foil. But the collection of modern items scanned by Google should include a large number of more casual and colloquial entries. I’m sure that modern ephemeral teen slang is wildly underrepresented but older surviving usages would show up more often. And the lines show pretty much exactly the shape you would expect.
Did you check for “tinfoil” (without the space)? The OED has that entry, with citations going back to 1467. The definition notes that the term may also refer to “a similar sheet of an alloy… of aluminium”, though none of the quotations use the term in that sense.
Looks like “tinfoil” is more common than “tin foil” in Google’s ngram database. Only in a brief period in the 1830s did “tin foil” show more prevalence.
Anyhow, here in Chicago, “tinfoil” is still fairly regularly used, at least among my peers and their parents (so ages 40-70). I tend to use “aluminum foil,” myself, but I’ll use “tinfoil,” as well, and it’s not a word that sounds dated or unusual to my ears.
DARE is a survey of how people across America refer to particular items. It doesn’t deal with etymology. All it would say - caricaturing - is that people in the Midwest say tin foil, people in New England say aluminum foil, and people in South Carolina call it tea foil.
Ya forgot that small group of morans that call it “coke foil”.
CMC fnord!
Wisconsinite here, and everyone I know calls it tinfoil. Even my grown children.
Well, I should qualify that last statement: my daughter has been living in Australia for the last 7 years and has picked up on most of the Aussie terminology, so I really don’t know what she calls it anymore.
My previous Chief (an Aussie) called it something all-foil, or maybe (logically) alfoil. Given his thick accent, he could have been talking about his meals containing offal, to be honest.
You know, of course (being a Doper) that while tin reflects Illuminati mind-control rays, aluminum actually amplifies them. The great coup was having industry switch to aluminum, while keeping “tin” in usage. This ensures that those who have learned the Truth, and are inclined to put on said hats, are in fact doubly-susceptible while believing themselves safe.
(and yes, this is a genuinely-circulating theory out there. how could it not be?)
Gee, you’re lucky. I’ve been waiting eight years for the answer to my post in this thread.
Heavier.
It’s been called tin foil every place i have been in the US, and that’s every state but Hawaii
It was also tin foil a lot longer than it has been aluminum foil, and the name has simply stuck.
Go into any grocery store where ever you might be, ask for tin foil and they will know exactly what you want.
The tin foil was great, you saved it, and hunted up old fishing sinkers, then melted it and you got homemade solder.
I also remember it being stiffer and sturdier than the aluminum stuff.
We used lead for things too, it made great stuff, made good paints, metal soldiers etc
We survived because we DID NOT EAT IT
In Australia while the term ‘tin foil’ is common and understood, it seems to be disappearing.
The preferred term for the modern stuff here is Alfoil.
I always thought alfoil was a commercial product name that had become generic, like linoleum, but on chasing it up, the term just seems to be an Australian regionalism, and is used to describe the material, and fits in with the Australian tendency to abbreviate words and that.