If you fixed an egg by making a hole in a piece of bread and dropping the egg into it, then frying it . . . we called that a “Rocky Mountain.” I know there are lots of names for this, but I have no idea where “Rocky Mountain” came from.
We also called it “toasted cheese.” Never came across “grilled cheese” until I saw it on the menu at the 5 & Dime store lunch counter. Also, it was never “tuna salad,” but just “tuna fish.”
My mother never used the word “shopping” as in, “I’m going shopping.” It was only ever, “I’m going to the store.” Never heard the word “shopping” used like this until I was well along in school.
My mother grew up in the 1920’s in a Slovak neighborhood-- both of her parents were from the Old Country. And back then, without TV, there wasn’t the Homogenous American Experience that we have going on now. There were a lot of common expressions that I wasn’t exposed to until I went to school. Including, I was always called by my middle name, and didn’t really grok what my first name was until I went to first grade (didn’t go to kindergarten).
My parents were third-generation Jewish Americans who spoke perfectly assimilated, newscaster-style Midwestern American English.
But we pronounced hummus “hoo-moose.”
Huh. I do have a vague memory of that, now that you mention it. In this case, then, my father was technically wrong, because on this camping trip what we had was not an outhouse but a latrine (hole in the ground with arrangement for sitting when needed).
Anyway, thanks for the reminder.
Roddy
Tire Pressure Gauge = “Wind Gauge”
Remembered another one…
Our neighborhood used to be a square. One of the roads was extended some time in the late 80s and about a dozen houses were built. While most of the houses in our neighborhood were ranches and all of them were built in the late 60s, this extension had all lovely new colonials.
We have forever called it the “new house road” and continue to do so, even though the houses are all about 30 years old.
Years ago I was at the Auto Parts store, and I asked the guy working there for a Jesus pin. After much confusion it turned out I was looking for a Cotter pin. My Grandfather got quite a kick out of that when I told him - he’d always called it a Jesus pin b/c he was always dropping them into the engine, and that was his expletive upon doing so.
The remote control in my house is called a converter. From the time when cable boxes had buttons you pushed in from the 80’s so we would call that the tv converter and we use that term now.
British citizen and resident here – this told of, to hopefully head off possible trans-Atlantic confusions and misunderstandings. The simple breakfast-time or other-times thing of slices of bread soaked in beaten egg, and then fried. My parents – likely following on from their parents – called this, “dipped egg”. I’m probably a born pedant and words-nerd – from the very first, this expression annoyed me. I saw it as self-evidently nonsensical – it’s not the ****ing egg that’s dipped ! The ****ing bread is what’s dipped in the ****ing egg, for heaven’s sake ! I don’t recall ever taking my parents to task for their use of the idiotic expression; but I’ve eschewed use of said expression, lifelong. The more usual, and more sense-making, UK name for this thing, is “eggy bread” – which is what I say on the rare occasions when I need to refer to it.
I like the way you talk.
I’m thinking maybe a sly reference to “Rocky Mountain oysters”?
I’ve never heard of sandwich meats called 'donkey dicks" and if offered a sandwich with donkey dicks as an ingredient, I would not eat it.
We used this as the name of the third seat or cargo area in a station wagon.
When little, our son decided that a check out counter was the booper. “Daddy, you have to put the soda up there so she can boop them,” even if I’d explain that I had one up there and we didn’t need to take the others out from under the cart.
I’d forgotten about the ice box 
That’s what the fridge was called when I was growing up - I may have to back to using that.
Oh yeah, one more. Dad always used to call his umbrella the bumbleshoot
In the house I grew up in, we had a “living room.” This was the room in the house that was vacant for most of my childhood. It was furnished with uncomfortable couches and pictures of long dead relatives. On holidays when many guests were over, that was the central room of the house where everyone congregated.
The guests would never be in the room we always spent every evening which was the “TV room” or the “family room.”
Along those same lines, 8 O’clock is “eggrock”. For quite a while my daughter, then around 2, kept saying “is it eggrock”? We had no idea what eggrock was, so we’d bring toys to her “is this eggrock”? “Is THIS eggrock”?
Somehow one night when I was putting her to bed, I said something like "okay it’s 8 O’Clock time for bed, and she said (disgustedly for we adults are SO stupid :D), “yes, EGGROCK!”.
So that’s how we found out what eggrock was.
Also “guess what”? (from my then 3 something granddaughter) adults: “what”?
Granddaughter "toTATOes!!! (potatoes), then she’d laugh her little head off. What can I say, we’re easily amused. So now, naturally if we’re having potatoes it’s “toTAToes”!
When my parents converted our garage into a room, they must have not known what to call it, because it became known as “downstairs” even though there were only three stairs separating it from the rest of the house. Likewise, the freezer kept there was “the downstairs freezer.” Now my freezer in the garage is only one step down, and I still call it the downstairs freezer. Luckily, my husband doesn’t require logic in my names for things.
Huh? What obvious reasons? Sorry if I’m missing something here.
Another couple from my family
Fluoridated water = confluted water (I had a bit of trouble in pronunciation at the time but it has stuck)
Ibis = Yanco birds. We lived in the town of Yanco and there were a lot of ibis around
Broken egg = once as a child i dropped an egg on the floor. My mother who was nearby asked if I had dropped an egg and I said no. She came over looked at the mess and then at me with a please explain and I apparently said that as it was broken it is not an egg any more.
I’m pretty sure my family kept all these in use just to humiliate me:smack:
Come on, people! The Way Back is the cargo space behind the back seat of a Volkswagon Beetle! Which I used to be small enough to fit into, back in 1968.