The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #10188   Message #1888412
Posted By: GUEST,Scoville at Dad's
19-Nov-06 - 03:06 PM
Thread Name: Colloquialisms- Post & Define 'Em! Fun!
Subject: RE: Colloquialisms- Post & Define 'Em! Fun!
In Texas it's New OR-leans, usually run together so it sounds like one word (nuORlins). And it's not a PEE-can (can, as in the tin thing in which you buy beans), but a pe-CAHN, that we put in pies.

I had a college classmate from Milwaukee who asked where the "bubbler" (drinking fountain) was. I had never heard this, but my New Jerseyite mother said she had, although she and her friends didn't use it regularly as children.

We've also got "icehouses", which are like semi-outdoor bars (some are more like convenience stores that sell a lot of alcohol)--they often have garage doors in the walls. I believe it's derived from the practice of storing and selling alcohol from literal icehouses back when we had them (although I don't know where you'd have a real icehouse this far south since you'd never have any ice to store in it).

Rebel-Yankee Language Test. Ha ha! I scored 81% Southern, which surprises me since I learned to talk from my decidedly Yankee parents, even though I've lived on the Gulf Coast for the best part of my life.