Dialect meme from megamole and others

[wellinghall]

I'm English, of mixed Yorkshire / Derbyshire / Nottinghamshire parentage, growing up in Leicestershire / Lincolnshire.

1. A body of water, smaller than a river, contained within relatively narrow banks.
Stream

2. What the thing you push around the grocery store is called.
Shopping trolley.

3. A metal container to carry a meal in.
Lunch box

4. The thing that you cook bacon and eggs in.
Frying pan

5. The piece of furniture that seats three people.
Settee

6. The device on the outside of the house that carries rain off the roof.
Gutter

7. The covered area outside a house where people sit in the evening.
Porch

8. Carbonated, sweetened, non-alcoholic beverages.
Lemonade

9. A flat, round breakfast food served with syrup.
Pancake

10. A long sandwich designed to be a whole meal in itself.
Roll

11. The piece of clothing worn by men at the beach.
Trunks

12. Shoes worn for sports.
These days I call them trainers, but they were plimsolls when I was a kid.

13. Putting a room in order.
Tidying up

14. A flying insect that glows in the dark.
Firefly

15. The little insect that curls up into a ball.
Woodlouse

16. The children's playground equipment where one kid sits on one side and goes up while the other sits on the other side and goes down.
Seesaw

17. How do you eat your pizza?
Knife and fork (but I don't eat pizza)

18. What's it called when private citizens put up signs and sell their used stuff?
I've rarely seen anyone do that. So I suppose the nearest is a car-boot sale.

19. What's the evening meal?
Tea (when I was young), dinner (now)

20. The thing under a house where the furnace and perhaps a rec room are?
The what and perhaps a what? The only thing I can think of under a house is a cellar or a basement. Most UK houses don't have either.

21. What do you call the thing that you can get water out of to drink in public places?
Water fountain

Comments

[findabair.livejournal.com]

This meme is quite useful for a poor confused non-native speaker like me - 'plimsoll' is an entirely new word for me, plus I knew the word 'settee', but had no idea what it was. And it's interesting to hear that you equal tea to dinner - I can never keep straight what kind of a meal 'tea' is. I can tell you I was confused the first time I heard someone say that they had [some kind of food] for tea, when I knew tea only as a beverage!

Thanks for posting this :)

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Tea can mean anything from the drink, through this plus a light sandwich or cake, to a more substantial tea-plus-sandwiches-plus-cakes, to the main evening meal (often called "high tea"). To some extent, the use of "tea" for the main evening meal is connected with Northern English, and with working-class usage.

Plimsolls are to some extent children's wear - very simple, light, flat-soled.

Settee and sofa are pretty well synonymous.

[didiusjulianus.livejournal.com]

My experience is that plimsolls are also sometimes called pumps (or vice versa), and the ones you buy for little kids to do PE in are generally black with various types of fastening or none. Sometimes you get white ones, usually lace-up, which are more commonly known as plimsolls rather than pumps. This is becoming less common as more people buy/can afford, say, trainers or proper tennis shoes for their children. I haven't seen any of the white ones on sale for ages although you can probably get them.

A plimsoll isn't in my book really the same thing as a modern trainer, which has a more substantial sole and is more suitable for running, tennis, aerobics, the gym etc than a flat-soled pump which is only really suitable for under 7s doing fairly low impact stuff. Personally I would draw many distinctions between various types of trainer/sports shoe/leisure shoe, if pushed, although I would probably refer to them all as my trainers unless I had some specialist ones for a single sport, and I only own one pair anyway.

I vaguely know what sneakers means, but I'm not sure if the term these days covers trainers or plimsolls or both (or neither??).

[lynn-maudlin.livejournal.com]

I stole it from Pat-- But thanks, I never knew what "plimsolls" were! Language is fun, English especially - such a living thing, like a massive snowball!