Never having heard the term Binky, I looked it up, only to find an internet assertion that Nookie was another American term for pacifier. Is that right?
Collins on the web defines Nookie as “Sexual intercourse (informal, humorous)…” (to which I would add, archaic. The sort of word you might hear in a Carry On film.)
.j
I’ve never personally heard anyone back in the States refer to a pacifier as a “nooky” or “nookie” or whatever. It could be a regionalism, but in my experience, that word referred strictly to canoodling.
(Which is another Americanism the Brits might have opinions about.)
Edit to add: I was curious, so I googled “canoodling,” and the OED says the earliest documented use is in the writing of a British journalist in the mid 1800s. So evidently I’m wrong that it’s an Americanism. Ah well.
I can’t say no one has ever used it for pacifier but it normally refers to sexual intercourse
Boelter Hall. Boalt Hall is the former name of UC Berkeley Law.
Strange - here’s a specimen link.
j
Sometimes. There are plenty of places where there’s a 12th Street and a 12th Avenue, and you will get completely lost if you try for the wrong one, usually they’re orthogonal.
In some places, e.g. Oregon, you can’t even leave off cardinal directions. That N or NE or W at the beginning is essential.
FWIW, I had never heard the term “binky” until the last 10 years.
My wife’s grandmother was a working class Brit who drove trucks for the RAF. She was evacuated at Dunkirk.
Anyway, when we went to the UK, we decided to find her childhood home. We had the address, it is in the town of Tonbridge but we ended up in Tunbridge Wells which is a very posh place. We figured it out, but not without a lot of help from locals.
Might be regional or even a family-by-family thing - but I did just remember that there is a brand called NUK.
Both, really. Some people might possibly truncate when talking to a close neighbour and they both know that the other will understand them, but there are indeed lots of non-unique street names.
Yeah, both really. Not including ‘Street’ etc. just sounds very odd to Brits and immediately marks you out as a clueless tourist.
I remember being confused the first time I came across that in a book. The only previous times I’d seen the word was in “grizzly bear,” so I thought the baby must be making a horrendous racket, or else really, really ugly.
I don’t know if this is true in the US, but in the UK terrible used to mean ‘inspires terror’. Hence HMS Terrible, from 1895 and before. (Not that long ago, really).
And awful used to mean ‘inspires awe’.
For one thing, few people would ever be sure that it is a unique street name in that town. Lots of urban streets will have a lane or mews or something, with the same first part of the name, branching off it at some point. And there could just as easily be some avenue or drive out in suburbs with the same first part. So to make sure everyone is talking about the same place, you always specify street, avenue, road, close, lane etc.
It’s still strange they named two ships “Terror” and the Greek personification of darkness and were shocked when the expedition ended in tragedy and people maybe ate each other.
As an American, while I’m familiar with both original definitions of the word, in my lifetime, when I’ve heard or seen either word used, it’s nearly always being used to convey “really bad” – and in the few times when I’ve seen a writer or speaker use the words in their other meanings, they always have to highlight, “and I mean that in the original sense of the word.”
The American song “Battle Hymn of the Republic” uses the phrase “His terrible swift sword” (clearly in the sense of “inspires terror”) – but there, too, the song dates from the 19th century (it was written during the American Civil War).
That’s extremely obsolete, like something from the 1920s. For some reason we went for a few years without a phone in the 1970s, towards the end of the time when that wasn’t extremely unusual, and once we got a phone installed we did not start saying we were “on the telephone”.
Thanks. I haven’t been on campus in ages.
Does anyone still say “on the mains” to indicate you have electricity (and/or water?)?
As in the hymn “Before Jehovah’s awful throne”.
Some US regional pronunciations might baffle not only Brits but also other Americans.
Where I come from, the people who nail shingles on are called “roofers,” but when they’re done, we can admire our new “rhuf.”
A carrot is a “root” vegetable, but we clear the way for them by pulling weeds out by the “rhuts.”
… or would you say “on the grid” ? “Off the grid” is definitely a thing.
Does “grid” refer to the electricity network in the US, as it does in the UK ?